The Mocking Program

  "Inside. She's crying inside." To the vorec he said, "Please, ma'am. This is a necessary routine follow-up. Did you know the deceased?"

  "Y-yes. I know—I knew him. You have no idea what happened to him?"

  "No, ma'am. Did you also know a Wayne Brummel? And it would be helpful if you gave us a name, so I could stop calling you 'ma'am.'"

  "I don't know anyone named Brummel. I'd like—I want to see him. George. Mr. Anderson."

  "The bod— He's being taken to the police morgue, Nogales Division."

  "All right—I understand. But I can't come now. I just can't. My daughter is here at the house, and I—I have to take care of some things first. Would—eleven o'clock tomorrow morning be all right?"

  Hyaki's whisper ensured he would not be heard over the spinner. "He's not going anywhere."

  Cardenas glanced disapprovingly in his assistant's direction. "Eleven o'clock is fine, Ms. Anderson. I'm sure we could all do with some sleep. Have you ever been to the station?"

  "N-no, but I have personal transportation. I'm sure my car can find it." She was stammering now. "This is just terrible, and I—I don't know what I'm going to do. What I should do."

  "I'll see you there at eleven o'clock then, Ms....?" Cardenas lowered the spinner and looked up. "She cut off."

  Hyaki shrugged. Beneath his disabled slicker, flesh rippled against the night. "Not surprising. You just told her that her husband, or boyfriend, or favorite gigolo, has been murdered. She needs for that to sink in, to do some serious bawling."

  Cardenas nodded. "Hoh. That would be the normal thing to do. Except that this is looking less and less normal." Above the mustache, incongruously blue eyes that had once belonged to a beautiful nineteen-year-old French girl gazed up at the sergeant. "Why wouldn't she confirm her name? She must know we can pull it up from Records in a couple of minutes."

  Hyaki considered. "You want to go out to the house now?"

  The Inspector hesitated. "No, not now. It's late. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt."

  "What doubt?" Hyaki was cozing his own spinner.

  "Hell, I don't know. Think of something." Turning, Cardenas headed toward the waiting cruiser.

  Hyaki found what he was looking for before the doors of the official vehicle slid silently aside to admit the two cops. "Funny thing. City records say there's a Surtsey Anderson living at the same address as our George Anderson. But she told us there was no Ms. Anderson. Ain't that odd? There's also a Katla Anderson, age twelve, listed as being in residence. Undoubtedly not the daughter of George and Surtsey." He slipped the spinner back in his pocket. "Which leaves us with the question of where to find Wayne Brummel."

  "On his way to the morgue, apparently, dwelling in silent symbiotic communion with George Anderson. A cleanie who doesn't have a wife named Surtsey or a daughter named Katla." Muttering to himself, Cardenas slipped into the seat opposite Hyaki. Sensing clearance, the door automatically slid shut behind him. Hyaki put the unmarked vehicle in forward and the engine hummed on full charge.

  "You want to follow the body?"

  Cardenas shook his head. He knew where the body was going. It was not a place he was particularly fond of visiting, especially late on a cool night. He'd spent far too many nights there.

  "Forensics needs time to do their work. Not that I think they're going to find anything else of significance. I'm tired, and confused. Let's go to Glacial."

  Hyaki turned down the appropriate street. An advert tried to attach itself to the window, careful not to block the driver's field of view. Static charge flowing through the glass drove it away, squealing. The charge, like the advert, was technically illegal. But police work was tough enough without having to suffer an endless parade of flying neonic blandishments for snack foods, vit shows, technidrops, soche services, sporting events, and assorted gadgetry that was as unnecessary as it was remarkable.

  The sergeant drove slowly, merging with the traffic. Even though the great mass of commuters used the climate-controlled induction tubes or company-supplied armored transport to travel to and from work, there was always independent traffic in the Strip. With forty million people, give or take ten million undocumenteds, spread out like people-butter from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, it could not be otherwise. But now, approaching midnight, it was comparatively easy to get around. The evening maquiladora shift was still hard at work, laboring in the vast spread of manufacturing and assembly plants and their attendant facilities, and the bulk of the night shift wouldn't come online for another hour yet.

  The unmarked police car slipped straightforwardly through the largely silent traffic. A renegade Ladavenz, tricked out to sound like it was running on an internal combustion engine instead of fuel cell and batteries, let out a primal growl as it accelerated among lanes. Though technically breaking the law against late-night noise pollution, the three kids inside were not seriously abusing the opportunity. Cardenas and Hyaki ignored them.

  As soon as they skated out of Quetzal, passing the number eighty-five induction shuttle station with its opaque, solar-energy-absorbing walls and unseen commuters waiting patiently within, the looming shapes of the industrial-commercial district gave way to an architectural panoply of codo coplexes and enclosed shopping facilities. Coated in a wide range of solar energy-absorbing polymers, the pastel structures were a spirit-lifting shift in tone from the utilitarian gloom of Quetzal. The Glacial Cafe was situated at the end of one such pedestrian coplex, backed up against a garage and rapicharge station. Only two vehicles were parked at the latter, topping off their batteries for the night.

  Hyaki dodged couples and families as he pulled into an empty parking space. There was a larger than usual number of pedestrians on the street, reveling in the rain-cooled night. Tomorrow, everyone would disappear indoors, when the sun reasserted its ancient dominance over this desiccated part of the world. One couple, feeling no pain, nearly ran into Hyaki as the two policemen approached the entrance to the cafe. Their eyes widened as they took in all of him. The sergeant hastened to reassure them with one of his wide, beatific smiles. Grateful, they staggered past, weaving more or less in the direction of the nearest mall entrance.

  A blast of cooler air enveloped the two men as the door to the establishment scanned their faces. Failing to match them with any known or reputed antisocs, it granted them entrance.

  Cardenas was fond of the Glacial. With its retro-2040s Alaskan decor, soft lights, and Brazilian-Namerican fusion menu, it reminded him of the good times of his youth. Married once, he had few dates these days. Relationships often began well, only to end in shock and wariness on the part of his partners when they found out he was an intuit. Explaining that he could not read minds, that he was only making use of highly specialized police training for which he had demonstrated a particular aptitude, did little to bolster a woman's confidence in her ability to feint and jab.

  "You know what I'm thinking!" they would exclaim.

  "No I don't," he would invariably protest. "Intuits aren't mind readers."

  "But you can extrapolate from everything I do, everything I say. The way I look at you, the inflection of every syllable I mouth, how I hold my left hand, the way I ..." At about that point they would break off the argument to declare, "You knew I was going to say all this, didn't you?"

  Protests of innocence were of no use. Most women were convinced that dating an intuit was akin to trying to run through the starting defensive line of the Moscow Dynamo: a girl was simply outmatched before she could get started.

  Not, Cardenas reflected as he and Hyaki settled into an empty booth, that the majority of single cops didn't lead lonely lives anyway.

  Vitalizing before him, the menu politely inquired if he wanted to null the audio and read about the establishment's offerings in peace. Correctly taking Cardenas's lack of response as permission to continue, it proceeded to recite the late-night specials. Stuffed into the opposite side of the booth, Hyaki was mooting whether to order the tambaqui and chips or f
ejoada with barbecued capybara.

  Not long after their respective orders were relayed to the kitchen, a waitress appeared with Cardenas's keoki coffee and the sergeant's double espresso milkshake. Hot and cold for slim and large, the Inspector reflected as he dosed down on his steaming mug. The confused identity of the corpse they had just encountered collided in his thoughts with the puzzling response of the man's wife-not-wife. One did not need to be an intuit to realize something more than the usual mug-and-drug was involved in the man's death. It was turning rapidly into a bona fide realimad, non compos mental, strain on the brain, jane. Cardenas didn't like that. He liked things direct and straightforward, in the manner of most cops. Neat and clean on the scene. Better if the scan on the dead cleanie had turned up no identity instead of two.

  The ganglet of ninlocos arrived before his food did. They swaggered in past the protesting door, the lanky chieflado in the lead spizzing it with a spinner whose ident was torqued to reflect instead of inform. Behind the chingaroon ambulated a group of negs and poses, though which was who and who was witch was hard to say at first glance. Hyaki looked over his shoulder, grunted a kata, and wished that their food would hurry up and emerge from hibernation in the kitchen.

  Traying chow, the waitress delivered to another table. One of the nins, of inscrutable gender, tweeted at her and accompanied the whistle with an obscene vapowraith that oozed from the lipgrammable stimstick held in his/her mouth. The scented smoke sculpture wrapped itself around the unwilling waitress, wisps of pale suggestiveness clinging to her like glued air until with flailing hands she slapped the last of it away. Laughing at her fretful efforts to maintain her dignity, the nins took over a particularly well-situated table from a pair of uni students. Wholly intimidated, the young couple abandoned it without a word, pocketing their glowing vits and fleeing the restaurant with as much haste as they could manage.

  One of the negs reached out to grab a rough handful of the girl's backside as she tried to hurry past. Hyaki started to get up. Cardenas motioned him back down. The neg held on to the terrified student for a few seconds before letting her go. The Inspector knew that he would. The antisoc had strutted a series of raw movements even a novice could have intuited.

  When their food arrived, the two officers ate in silence. Like everyone else in the cafe, they ignored the loud and boorish antics of the ganglet. Collective rudeness was not yet a federal crime. But the ninloco cacophony did nothing to soothe Cardenas's already troubled thoughts, or improve his digestion.

  Why wouldn't the woman give them a name she must know they could, and would, soon learn for themselves? Why wouldn't she admit to at least a live-in relationship with George Anderson? Or Wayne Brummel, the Inspector reminded himself.

  "Yolaolla! Si—you—you with the nasty 'stash. You sitting front-eyes with el gordo, there."

  Ignoring the intrusion, Hyaki continued to nibble on the last of his fried fish. The yakk was directed at Cardenas anyway.

  The Inspector looked up from his bison and eggs. Perpetually mournful eyes regarded the neg. The would-be chingaroon was not quite two decades, all sass and flash. How many kids had he dealt with like this one, busy burning their souls like matches? It was late, he was tired and hungry, and not in the mood to baby-sit. He could have let Hyaki deal with it, but there was always hope. Hope that a small lesson might spark a hint of maturity. Where feasible, words were always more efficacious than an arrest. In jail, kids tended not to talk to other kids about being kids.

  "Don't do it." As always, his tone was quiet but firm. A little firmer now, perhaps, than when he had been delivering his supper order to the attentive menu.

  It was not a response the ninloco had expected. It showed in the fleeting glance he gave his expectant colleagues. "Cay-yeh, homber— you don' ask me no questions. I'm the one hackin' the yakk here."

  Picking up his knife and fork, Cardenas resumed eating. "Just don't do it."

  Brows furrowing, the neg leaned toward him. "Didn' you hear me, homber? Just for the yell of it, what 'it' is it you don' want me to do?" He favored his companions with a knowing smirk, and they smiled appreciatively at their topboy's wit.

  Sitting back, Cardenas dragged a cloth napkin across his lips, the slight charge in the fabric instantly disinfecting them. "Well, crazy-boy, since you ask, first thing you need to turn off the knife in your calf scabbard. Don't you know that leaving something like that on is dangerous? The safety could slip, and you'd lose a leg." He looked up, past the leader of the ganglet. "The big kid behind you needs to forget about frogging my partner. Even with the slywire he's holding, Fredoso would break his arm. You young ladies," he continued, addressing the now wide-eyed and uncertain pair of poses, "want to leave your ordnance holstered. You don't want to see where mine is, because I don't flash it unless I intend to use it, and you don't want me digging yours out from where you have them supposedly perfectly concealed."

  In full verbal if not physical retreat, the chieflado was glaring at the imperturbable Inspector. "Yola, homber, you spazzing, man! We don' got none of what you bubble. We just wanted to toss a little flak-chat, sabe? We only—"

  One of the girls interrupted him. "Mesmo, Taypa—the homber's an intuit! He's comping your moves!" She and her companion were already backing away from the table.

  Smiling while still chewing his fish, Hyaki raised his left arm. The sleeve slid back to reveal a blue bracelet alive with blinking LEDs. One vitalized a symbol morph that halted a few centimeters in front of topboy's face. The ninloco's eyes widened as he focused on it.

  "We didn' mean nothing." Looking suddenly less imposing, the bigger boy had turned in the blink of an eye from predator to pound cake. He was backpedaling so fast he threatened to run over the two rapidly withdrawing poses. Eyeing the two soft-voiced men in the booth, the waitress gratefully resumed her rounds.

  Full of fish, his bulging cheeks giving him the appearance of a gargantuan chipmunk, Hyaki shook his head sadly. "Kids! Things sure were better in the last century, when there was hardly any juvenile crime."

  Cardenas nodded agreement as he shoved his cred into the table's receptacle. Tracking the cred's instructions, it would forward the cost to the departmental billing center in Nogales. He was careful, as always, to leave the tip in cash. That way the restaurant owner couldn't scam any cred off the top. Besides, a cash tip carried with it a certain cachet in the form of nostalgia value.

  By the time the two men exited the cafe, with the door thanking them courteously for their patronage as it closed behind them, the only sign of the ganglet of fearless ninlocos was the faint and rapidly fading fragrance of the poses' perfume lingering on the still-damp night air.

  TWO

  THE SKY WAS UTTERLY DEVOID OF CLOUDS THE following morning. A sure sign, Cardenas knew as he exited the induction shuttle and entered Nogales arcoplex's NFP division headquarters, that it was likely to pour sometime late this afternoon. Such was the predictable annual pattern of the Southwest summer monsoon that he had grown accustomed to since childhood. The July-August rains came earlier and lasted longer these days, it was said, because of global warming. That might be bad for Eskimos, but it was fine with the residents of the Strip. Flash floods notwithstanding, there was no such thing as too much rain in the desert.

  Working a late shift the previous night had allowed him to sleep in this morning. It was funny, but the more he aged, the harder he worked and the less sleep he seemed to need.

  By the time I'm dead, I'll be ready to retire, he mused as he arrived at the morgue. Somehow, knowing that his accumulating pension would pay for a great funeral did little to cheer him. It was a wonderful topic to be pondering as he wended his way to the cold room where the unscavenged remains of George-Wayne Anderson-Brummel were housed in a cylinder of industrial formagas designed to preserve soft body parts while preventing decomposition.

  Eleven o'clock came and went. Then twelve, after which the afternoon count began. No one named Anderson, or Surtsey, or Brummel app
eared at the Nogales morgue to identify, inspect, caress, condemn, or otherwise make the acquaintance of the body of Anderson-Brummel. Running gag aside, the morgue was not a favorite place to kill time. Angel Cardenas grew impatient, then annoyed, and finally hungry.

  At two-thirty he popped his spinner and hayoed the ident for Anderson-Brummel's self-proclaimed un-spouse. There was no response. That could be good, because it might mean she was in transit to the morgue. It could also be bad, because the house ought to automatically relay the call to whatever communications device she carried on her person. In the confusion and angst of the moment, it was possible she had taken off sans tech, he knew. Possible, but unlikely. Citizens simply no longer traveled without a means for continuously staying in touch with the rest of civilization.

  However, all things were possible, he reminded himself. Especially in the Strip, where a cop's life was many things, but never boring. So he waited another half hour before intuition and stomach drove him out of the morgue and via peoplemover to Administration.

  Entering NFP's Nogales command center entailed passing through somewhat stricter security than visiting the morgue—or, for that matter, the Glacial cafe. Elaborate precautions were necessitated by the uncomfortably large number of individuals and organizations who held grudges against the police. These good folk sporadically tried to give vent to their feelings by blowing up everything from parking meters to individual officers to entire city blocks. Miniaturization having in the past hundred years affected the field of explosives as significantly as nearly every other component of modern civilization, it was incumbent upon those likely to be the target of such grievances to minimize the individual access of the congenitally disaffected.

  So Cardenas was compelled to pass through a corridor that contained no fewer than five security stations, the first and last of which were administered by live humans, and the intervening three by machines. His ident bracelet was checked, his height and weight and body density were measured, his retinas were scanned, his cerebral cortex measured (and not found wanting), and in due course he was passed through to the inner sanctum of the Namerican Federal Police, Nogales Division.