Katla Mockerkin begged to disagree. "You won't lose any of that, Mr. Cardenas. The Federal Police can have it all. I'm only going to try and wipe the box." Meaningfully, she put the tips of her fingers to one side of her head. "The rest of it, all the other muy malo stuff— it's still up here."
In his immediate concern for her safety, he had forgotten about her capabilities, and why The Mock had valued her so highly in the first place. He vowed he would not do so again.
"Tell me what kind of facilities you need."
She gestured at the wall unit. "It can be done from here, I think. As long as I have uninterrupted access to a megaspeed connection and enough crunch. I just"—this time she didn't meet his gaze—"I just don't know . . . if I can do it."
Reaching out, he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Why not, Katla?"
She continued to avoid his eyes. "My mom's dead. I don't have any brothers or sisters. If I have any cousins, I don't know who they are or where they are. Now my father's dead, too. I didn't like him very much. He did bad stuff to a lot of people. But—he was my dad. The stuff in the box is all that's left of him. Wiping it—it'd be kind of like killing him myself."
"The gram he compiled is responsible for the death of your mother."
"I know!" Suddenly, she was near tears. "Don't you think I remember that? Don't you realize that if I had been paying more attention to the box, I might have come across this rotten, terrible gram and been able to do something with it or to it before Mom was murdered? If I had been monitoring like I should have been, she might not have been killed. But I stayed away from Dad's system. I didn't want to go near it, or have anything to do with it. I thought—I thought if I probed too much, it might tricktrack me, and find out where we'd gone. But I should've done just the opposite. I should have stayed on it. It's my fault. She didn't have to die! She didn't have to die!"
Sobbing, she fell into his arms. He held her tight, held her close. Looking up, he saw that Fourhorses was eyeing them strangely.
I know there's a bond here, he called out to the woman even though he knew she could not sense his thoughts. You see it, and I feel it. But, God help me, I've never had a kid of my own, and I'm not sure what to do. Thirty years of intuit training, and I'm not sure what to do.
Fourhorses knew what to do. Gently, she disengaged the weeping twelve-year-old from Cardenas's compassionate but awkward grasp and slowly rocked the tearful girl back and forth, murmuring reassuringly to her all the while. His thin shirt stained dark by tears, Cardenas sat back and watched. When he felt enough time had passed, he addressed the girl as empathetically as he could.
"I realize how this could be difficult for you, Katla. But if you don't stop this program now, it's going to keep sending out orders telling people to catch you. That wouldn't be so bad. But the orders might also be for people to do something worse." He leaned forward imploringly. "You're the only one who can put an end to this, Katla. And I have to disagree with you about what you just said. It's not like you'd be killing anyone. The Mock's box is only a system compilation, a collection of soulless embedded grams. Just like any other box."
Fourhorses's tone reflected careful control. "You're asking a twelve-year-old girl who's been under tremendous emotional strain to dive right back into the middle of the source of her discomfort."
"It's—it's all right, Ms. Fourhorses." Katla pulled back and wiped at her eyes with the backs of both hands. "Mr. Cardenas is right. I'm the only one who can do this. It has to be done." She sniffed between sentences. "It should have been done a long time ago. Maybe if it had, my mom would still be here." Rising, she walked back to the little desk in the corner of the room. Picking up the vorec, she twirled it round and round in her hand, manipulating it with her fine, diminutive fingers the way a conductor would warm up a baton prior to leading a concert.
As Fourhorses and Cardenas looked on, the social worker leaned toward him and whispered apprehensively, "If the child suffers any adverse effects as a consequence of this, I'm going to have to hold you and the NFP responsible."
"I've been accepting responsibilities for serious happenings for a long time, Minerva." He nodded in the girl's direction. "The only one who can save her from this is herself." A paraphrase from an old read leaped into his mind. The bad grams that men program live after them; the good ones are oft interred with their old mollys. He moved a little closer to Katla.
"Can you really do it from here?" He indicated the vorec that was connected to the standard-issue commercial molly, which in turn was linked by the Nokarola dish on the roof to the Big Box beyond. "Do you need anything else? Any custom gear, or backup links, or technical assistance? Fresh wishwire or specialty wafers?"
Light glinted off the tears that were still drying on Katla's face as she shook her head briskly. Her reply was full of confidence. "Huh-uh. No problemo, federale." The small smile she managed to muster made her look much younger than her dozen years. Her expression was heartrendingly childlike.
Both were in striking contrast to her words and actions, which were those of an experienced prober and eeLancer. As Cardenas rejoined Fourhorses, the two adults lapsed into silence, marveling at the speed and skill with which the girl first accessed and then began to burrow deeply into the Big Box. Commands that were often as incomprehensible as they were complex spilled effortlessly from her lips. Images flowed and morphed so rapidly within the tunnel that Cardenas could not follow them. No mean box cutter himself, he followed the agile, effortless performance with awe.
Fingers dug into his shoulder. Forcing himself to look away from the girl's ongoing bravura performance with the vorec, he found himself staring into the startled eyes of Minerva Fourhorses. Her mouth was open, but no words were forthcoming. Instead, she was pointing with her other hand.
Half a dozen tiny machines had taken up positions at the foot of the double bed that dominated the other side of the room. The largest stood just over a centimeter high and sported three wiggling antennae. Next to it was a dull-surfaced, single-eyed creature that resembled a tank-tracked millipede. The other four devices were equally outlandish. One did not have to be an engineer or designer to recognize what they were doing.
Just like the human occupants of the room, they were observing Katla Mockerkin at work.
"Wugs," he observed succinctly.
"What do they want? How did they get in here?" Fourhorses's reaction to the utterly unexpected appearance of the miniscule mechanicals was no different from anyone else's. She was at once fascinated and chary. "Nothings supposed to be able to get in here. This is a safe house."
"It's still safe." Cardenas could not guarantee the claim, but past experience had shown him that whatever it was the wugs wanted, it would not involve violence. Unless one counted human violence against the wugs, that is. "They won't bother her, or us. Just ignore them."
"That's what everybody says to do." Fourhorses's attention remained fixated on the oddly engaging little bitbots. "I'm more worried about Katla."
Cardenas nodded in the girl's direction. "Her body may be here, but her cerebro is racing around somewhere inside the Box. I doubt she's even aware of our presence anymore." Indeed, the vacant expression on the girl's face showed that she was working in as near to a self-induced trance as a twelve-year-old could be expected to manage.
So Fourhorses held her peace, and did not move in the direction of the tiny intruders, or shout out a warning to Katla. For their part, the wugs squatted, or sat, or stood, according to their construction, and looked on in near-total, inscrutable silence. Like Fourhorses, Cardenas found himself wondering what they wanted, what they were thinking. If they did think. What was known for certain about the life of wugs would not fill a chip off a molly the size of a ball bearing.
They forgot all about the wugs, wug origins, and wug intentions when something boomed softly in the distance and the room shook slightly but disarmingly. Fourhorses frowned.
"Sounds like somebody ran a truck into a wall. Or dropped som
ething big."
Cardenas was already on his feet and heading for the room's only window. Flicking the switch that pulled down the glass pane covering the lower air vent, he squinted out through the charged bug mesh. His gaze skimmed gravel and decorative landscaping as well as the whitewashed concrete wall beyond to sweep up the rocky hillside that cupped the west end of the canyon. Movement was lacking, for which he was grateful. At the sound and feel of the unexpected rumble, Katla Mockerkin had looked up from her work, but only briefly. As she resumed her probe, an apprehensive Fourhorses bent down alongside Cardenas.
"What is it? Do you see something?" Her eyes widened as she saw the gun in his hand. It was a sizable department model. Unlike the ultra-compact weapons he had taken to Costa Rica and Masmatamoros, the big triclip pistol was anything but transparent. "What's that for?" she asked, almost immediately conscious of the sublime stupidity of the question.
"Get down." Gripping her shirt sleeve with one hand, he pulled her down next to him. "That wasn't a truck." As he spoke, a second rumble rippled through the bedroom, a miniature sonic boom that was far from sufficiently distant for the Inspector's taste. "Someone's shooting at the compound."
"But they can't!" The social worker was appalled—and, Cardenas saw, unashamedly frightened. "I was told that nobody can enter this canyon without clearing NFP security."
"We'll be sure and tell that to the people who are doing the shooting." Cardenas was in no mood to waste words on social niceties. If Fourhorses didn't care for his tone, she could go lock herself in the bathroom. Raising his voice, he called out, "How are you coming, Katla?"
The girl's response was a distant, muted murmur. "Okay, I guess." She did not offer to elaborate, and Cardenas wisely chose not to push her. Let her do her work. Meanwhile, he would do his. Looking one way, he saw a maelstrom of information seething within the box tunnel. Glancing the other, he saw six wugs sitting on the floor blissfully ignoring him as they raptly monitored Katla's efforts. They had not moved, nor had they reacted to the pair of explosions.
Something banged against the door. Inhaling sharply, Fourhorses tried to move toward Katla, but Cardenas held her back. At the same time, he sat down on the floor and shoved his back up against the unwavering mass of wall beneath the window. Hot, dry desert air poured in above his head, ruffling his hair as it collided with the room's air-conditioning. Raising the muzzle of the service pistol, he dialed through Narcolepsy and Paralysis before settling on the setting for Explosive. If he now so chose, he could blow away the door, a good chunk of hallway wall behind it, and anything organic unfortunate enough to find itself sandwiched in between.
As Inspector and social worker waited motionlessly, the door was flung wide. A massive figure clutching an oversized automatic weapon came charging into the girl's room. Fourhorses's eyes went wide as she sucked in a lungful of air, and Cardenas's finger tightened on the trigger of the pistol.
EIGHTEEN
LETTING OUT THE BREATH HE HAD NOT REALIZED he had been holding, Cardenas lowered his weapon and gestured for Hyaki to get down. Dropping to all fours, the sergeant crawled over to join the wide-eyed social worker and his partner. The booming that had first alerted the Inspector to the fact that something was wrong was louder now, closer and more frequent. Echoes indicated that the defenders of the compound were starting to return fire.
"How many?"
Hyaki nodded politely at the cringing Fourhorses. "Can't tell for sure yet. Ten, maybe more."
"How'd they gain access?"
"Don't know." Raising his head into the warm incoming draft, Hyaki peered out the window. "Worry about that later. Right now everyone's more concerned about how many we haven't been able to count. A couple of them have made it in as far as the vehicle port. Main structure integrity is still intact. McCurdy is busy trying to establish a secure perimeter." He looked in the direction of the raging tunnel. "I take it she's not playing a game."
Cardenas's expression was all the explanation the sergeant required. "That's what I figured. What's she doing?"
Turning, the Inspector raised himself up slightly and rested the barrel of the pistol on the windowsill. There was movement on the far hillside. He pushed the gun forcefully forward until it was poking through the bug screen. Taking careful aim, he fired. Fourhorses jumped. Lost in a world of her own, Katla Mockerkin ignored the commotion behind her. Beyond the compound wall, a surprisingly large quantity of granite, cedar, and underbrush erupted in a shower of newly made gravel and flying splinters. The movement on the hillside was not repeated.
"Killing her father," Cardenas informed his partner. "Maybe exorcising would be a more appropriate description." As his gaze continued to sweep the hillside, he proceeded to explain.
"So you think whoever's out there is operating under orders from this rogue gram?" Hyaki had positioned himself alongside his partner, his own much larger weapon piercing the bug screen at the other end of the window. Fourhorses sat with her back to the wall, her arms drawing her knees up to her chest.
"Can't be sure." Cardenas had always been a good shot. Of course, the explosive shells his gun was now keyed to fire allowed for a considerable margin of error when taking aim. "Could very well be. I might have been followed here. Or someone could have cracked the location through the Department box." He nodded in the direction of the hillside. "Might be Inzini, or Ooze, or some other group that would dearly love to wring the girl's mind like an old washrag. That's not going to happen."
"No." Repositioning his weapon, Hyaki fired. For so impressive a killing device, its report was surprisingly muted. "It's not." Noticing something off to his right and slightly behind him, he nodded in the direction of the watching wugs.
"Where'd they come from?"
"Answer that," Cardenas replied succinctly, "and you can name your own price and buy your own police force."
Something struck the roof west of the room. Fragments of ceiling, insulation, and disturbed dust came showering down on those huddled within. As with everything else, Katla Mockerkin ignored the intrusion. Cardenas had never seen anyone, child or adult, so focused on the mechanics of a probe. Equally unperturbed, the wugs did not move.
"Easily frightened little cucarachas, aren't they?" Hyaki remarked irreverently.
"It's not hard to be fearless when you don't know the meaning of death." Cardenas's finger again started to tighten on the trigger of his pistol, but eventually eased back without firing. The sliver of movement he'd locked on was only a terrified jackrabbit, bolting from a burrow as speedily as the bundles of fast-twitch muscle fibers in its remarkable legs could carry it. The booming of gunfire was constant now, like the approaching thunder of an impending monsoon storm.
"At least," he finished, "I assume they don't know it. I've yet to encounter a machine that does, other than abstractly."
"Please, will you two shut up talking about that kind of stuff?" Reflecting professional concern, Fourhorses jerked her head sideways in the girl's direction. She needn't have worried, Cardenas noted. Katla was deep into playing the box, all but oblivious to the gunfire and commotion that threatened to engulf her.
No one came running to tell them to evacuate, or to move to another part of the compound. In that respect, Cardenas mused, no news was good news—Lincoln's comment to the contrary notwithstanding.
Someone did come running for another purpose, however. The woman was very slight, very agile, and exceedingly determined. But in the time it took her to throw open the door, quickly scan the room, and locate Katla, Cardenas and Hyaki had time of their own to turn their attention away from the window. As the intruder raised her gun and Fourhorses tried to scream a warning, both men fired simultaneously. When the dust cleared, there was very little left of the matara— or for that matter, the door.
"Probably going to dock our pay for that." Hyaki nodded in the direction of the still-smoking wreckage that had been the entrance to the room.
Cardenas replied impassively. "Police work is a messy busin
ess." He indicated a spot on the near wall where a tiny pressure hypo had embedded itself in the composite. The woman had managed to get off one shot before the two federales had blown her away. The ph would contain a miniscule dose of something unpleasant, and probably lethal. Drawing an invisible line between impact point and shooter, Cardenas estimated the shot had passed less than half a meter above Katla's head. Insofar as he could tell, she had never so much as looked up.
Strange images boiled within the tunnel as the girl played the box like an electrified violin. A number of three-dimensional apparitions that swiftly came and went were particularly disturbing. They did not seem to trouble the serene twelve-year-old, who continued to croon into the vorec. The way she rolled it between her fingers and let it hover above her lips verged on the perverse.
"Angel!"
At Hyaki's shout, Cardenas retrained his pistol on the ruined doorway. The eyes of the pistol-wielding man who had appeared in the opening bulged. His feet scrambled for purchase on the floor, slipping amid the debris and the remains of would-be assassin.
"Jesus, watch it, you guys!"
Both federales lowered their weapons. The new arrival was one of their own. Breathing hard, his gaze flicked from the girl working the box, to the frightened social worker, to his armed and trigger-itchy colleagues.
"We've got three points secured on the perimeter, with the fourth coming under control." Flush with adrenaline, he was young, and managed to look simultaneously scared, exhausted, and excited. Having someone shoot at you does that to people, Cardenas knew. "Lieutenant McCurdy says it's safe to relocate to the entry hall, if you want to."