The Mocking Program

  Keeping clear of the window, Cardenas rose slowly to his feet. "We're okay here. Tell Mitch."

  The young federale nodded energetically. "If there's any change, I'll let you know."

  "How'd they get inside Security?" Hyaki was back on his feet. He also avoided standing in front of the window.

  The herald shook his head. "They're working on that. Mitch says not to worry. They'll recon the breach, and plug it." He disappeared back down the hallway.

  A crackling from the vicinity of the dimly roaring tunnel drew Cardenas's attention. As he looked on, the raging images faded, the tunnel going to black. Katla Mockerkin set the vorec down on the desk. Her final words might have reached the aural pickup—or maybe not. Off to the right, there was an echo of activity on the floor. Cardenas caught a fleeting glimpse of fleeing alien constructions of ceramic and metallic glass and composite. Putting his head to the floor and turning it sideways, he struggled to see under the bed. It was dark, and he could not see a hole. But the wugs were gone, as silently and furtively as they had come.

  "Good-bye—Daddy," he heard Katla Mockerkin say. Limpid eyes looked over at him as he rose to his feet. "I'm tired, Mr. Cardenas."

  "I know you are, Katla," he replied sympathetically. "I know." He indicated the now-subdued tunnel and, by inference, everything that had just wailed within. "It's done?"

  She nodded and brushed hair away from her face. "Gone. All gone. I wiped the whole system, from South Texas to Sanjuana, right across the Strip. From Maine to Madagascar. It's all gone. Everything my father made. I cut all the strings."

  "Good girl," was all Cardenas could think of to say.

  Looming up beside him, Hyaki was not shy about venturing his own opinion. "Local branches will have backup."

  "For local concerns. Any extended box, legit or illicit, is like a dragon. Cut off its head and the parts can still cause you trouble. But only if they can cooperate with each other. The main thing was to ensure Katla's safety. The gram that concerned itself with her was highly centralized. With the core wiped, that's no longer a concern. Something like that, something that intensely personal, wouldn't be backed up at the local level. Even a lepero like Mockerkin wouldn't have allowed it." He met Fourhorses's concerned gaze. "Now that the danger has been wiped, we can safely go after the surviving isolated segments of The Mock's nasty businesses. Katla will tell us how and where to find them."

  Hyaki nodded meaningfully. "What about the others who've been after her? The non-Mock elements?" He gestured outside, beyond the window. "Elimination of the command to recapture or kill the girl won't affect them."

  "No," Cardenas admitted, "but they've wanted to get their hands on her so she could supply them with the inner workings of their competitor's business. When that business starts to fall apart, either from attrition, lack of direction from the center, or the fact that NFP will be busily arresting people, they're going to lose interest fast. Katla's detailed knowledge of a collapsing enterprise will quickly lose any value. As for imaginary quantum means of stealing fiscal and other kinds of valuable crunch, word will get around pretty fast that it was nothing more than a harebrained pipe dream." His head tilted back as he turned his gaze upward. A much deeper mechanical drone than that emitted by chopters invaded the room.

  "Evac vertiprop coming," he remarked. "Took them long enough." Holstering his pistol, he looked back over at the girl. Fourhorses was standing next to her, murmuring maternal reassurances. Katla was nodding in response. The Inspector nudged his partner. Hyaki caught his friend's drift, and the two federales wordlessly exited the room, leaving the social worker to continue comforting the emotionally wrung-out twelve-year-old. As concerned as he was for the girl, Cardenas had been around long enough to know that there were times, personal involvement notwithstanding, when it was better to let someone other than himself do their job.

  Besides, he was thirsty, and hungry, and irregardless of the status of the current situation outside, had to take a piss really, really bad.

  He had just emerged from the shower when the pleasant feminine voice of his codo synapse informed him that he had visitors. Rubbing the back of his head with the bath towel he carried, he walked over to the alwayson tunnel that clung to one corner of the den and solicitared identification. Amplified for full-room pickup, the vorec fed his request directly to his concealed molly.

  An image materialized within the depths of the tunnel. Standing in the visitor's alcove on the ground floor awaiting admittance to the elevator was Minerva Fourhorses. In contrast to the last time he had seen her, she looked striking in casual weftfiber suit, matching purse, the latest slide shoes, and wide-brimmed thermotropic hat. As opposed to the last several times he had met with her, the appearance of the social worker's companion was even more arresting.

  Clad in a flex dress of light blue and green blinker that swirled up her budding figure like a clinging python, Katla Mockerkin looked not only several years older than her actual age, but downright sophisticated. Matching lightweight rainbow headgear shielded the top of her head from the Sonoran morning and swept down the back of her neck to entwine itself in her hair. It twinkled and shimmered when she moved, even in the codo complex's confined entry alcove. A pair of muse lenses peeked out of the fortified safety purse that hung from her shoulder. The heels of her semi-dress shoes were powered down for walking, the integrated internal hydraulics quiescent.

  "Minerva, Katla! What a pleasant surprise. Come on up," he told them via the tunnel, following the invitation with a spoken clearance code that would allow the two women to access the codo tower's elevator.

  Rubbing the last of the moisture from his hair, he moved quickly to put on some clothes. Several weeks had gone by since he had seen either The Mock's daughter or her case worker. The press of work at the Department had caused him to sink naturally back into the ebb and flow of life in the Strip. He had not forgotten about the girl, but he had been forced to push that particular concern to the back of his thoughts. One of the first things a rookie learned at Academy was that a preoccupied cop was a cop solicitaring an early death.

  The change in Katla Mockerkin was pronounced, and went far deeper than her stylish attire. Her eyes looked out at the rest of the world instead of inward, and she stood straight instead of hunching over like a child expecting always to be hit. Even her stride was different, longer and more confident, as if she was seeking out the next place to go instead of fearfully avoiding it. The attractive, confident individual standing before him was now much more young woman than frightened child.

  But the wariness was still there, in the way her gaze sought the far corners of the room and glanced quickly to the window that led to the outside. With time and tranquility the fear and mistrust should fade, though Cardenas suspected it would never leave her entirely.

  He started to give her a hug, but held himself back. Whatever relationship had developed between them was entirely artificial, a consequence of the tragic circumstances that had caused them to be thrown together. It would not stand the test of time. Attempts at reinforcement, however innocent or well-meaning on his part, would do nothing to augment the girl's growing independence. He settled for a cordial, thoroughly professional handshake and smile.

  "It's good to see you both again." He turned his attention to the social worker. "To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  "We have some news." When no one was shooting at her, Fourhorses glowed. "Good news. Don't we, Katla?"

  The girl nodded, focusing half her attention on Cardenas while reserving the rest for the interior of his codo. Even in the home of a federale, it was plain she still did not feel entirely safe.

  "I'm going away. Leaving the Strip. I'll miss some of my friends, but everyone says I can't go back to my soche. I understand why." Her smile was still shy, her manner withdrawn. "It'll be okay. I'm used to moving around."

  Escorting them inside, Cardenas gestured for them to have a seat on his couch. Minerva gratefully accepted a cold guarana,
while the girl opted for a rola. Cardenas, as usual, brewed himself an iced coffee.

  "You should be safe now, Katla," he told her. "Using the information you gave us, we've brought in nearly all of your father's most important associates along with a great many of the minor ones, and shut down their scattered operations. The other bad people who were after you have taken note of that. As best as we have been able to determine, it has caused them to rapidly lose interest in you. But the Department of Social Resources people and my friends at the NFP are right: just to make certain, you'd be safer and more comfortable living under a different name, in a different place."

  "That's what we came to tell you." Fourhorses was clearly excited for the girl. "Genealogy managed to track down an aunt and uncle she didn't even know she had. In New England. Small town, nice environment. Everything's been checked out and rated secure. The couple has two children of their own; a boy, fifteen, and a girl, fourteen. They've agreed to welcome Katla into their family. After a year, formal adoption procedures will be initiated. I anticipate no problems. Katla will become Harmony Jean Francis."

  The girl ducked her head shyly. "I always liked singing harmony, but I never had much. Now I get to be Harmony. It's pretty vacan."

  "I think so, too," he agreed. Color suffused Katla's cheeks—or maybe it was hope.

  He pondered a moment. "How would you like to meet an old friend of mine? Someone you can talk with safely even in your new home in New England." At Fourhorses's look of alarm, he hastened to reassure the social worker. "Don't worry. This will not compromise her new identity in any way."

  "Sure." The girl eyed him curiously. "I'm game."

  Rising from the couch, he directed her to follow him to the far side of the den. Seating her in the chair that faced his desk, he stood next to her.

  Picking up the vorec, he activated the tunnel and instructed the molly driver to accept open commands. Then he handed the verbal input device to her. She was looking at him expectantly, more at home inside a box than in someone's apartment. Leaning down and putting his mouth close to her ear, he murmured something too low for Fourhorses to overhear. The social worker looked on uncertainly, her expression reflective of her bemusement.

  Katla listened intently, made a face, but finally nodded. Bringing the vorec to her lips, she repeated to the waiting molly the command he had whispered to her.

  "Enter Charliebo: dog."

  The holomage that built in the tunnel was so full of life and synthesized expression that a stranger walking into the room at that moment could have been forgiven for thinking it real. It could become more authentic still, Cardenas knew, but it would not do so without provocation of a specific, specialized kind that Katla soon-to-be-Harmony would hopefully never encounter. Leaning farther forward, he spoke into the vorec.

  "Charliebo, the person next to me is Ms. Harmony Francis. She's a good friend of mine. I'd like you to be her friend, too."

  The extraordinarily lifelike holomage of the big German shepherd gazed solemnly back at him. Then it turned its attention to the girl, glowing tongue lolling loosely from the left side of its mouth, tail of shimmering crunch wagging briskly, regarding her out of eyes composed of incalculable accumulations of intricately compiled ocular grams.

  Katla was entranced. "What can he do?"

  "You'd be surprised. I was surprised. I could tell you, but I'd rather let you experiment on your own. Charliebo's very versatile.

  He'll play with you, and keep you company, and even watch over you." He put a comforting, paternal hand on her shoulder. "And you can have him with you whenever you want, wherever you go. Wherever there's access to the Big Box, that's where you'll find Charliebo." He stepped back. "Why don't you two get acquainted?"

  Thoroughly spellbound, she lost herself in making friends with the canine gram. Leaving her to the screen, Cardenas and Fourhorses quietly made their way back to the sitting area that faced the wide phototropic window.

  The social worker was beyond impressed. "That's the most realistic animal program I've ever seen! Where did you buy it?"

  "I didn't buy it. It's an outgrowth of some work I had to do a while ago, at GenDyne. Charliebo was a real dog. My dog. For a while, years ago, he was also my eyes. He died doing his job, but the essence of him got vacced and turned into an independent psychomorph. Don't ask me to explain the technology. Better box designers than I are still trying to figure it out. But organic or grammatic, he's still my dog. Now he's Katla's, too, even if he exists only as a morphological resonance haunting the deepest interstices of the Big Box."

  Fourhorses struggled to understand. "You said he could be her friend. That much I understand. But what did you mean when you said he could watch over her?"

  Cardenas's expression grew serious. "If the situation requires it, Charliebo can go fully tactile."

  Her jaw dropped. "No private gram can go tactile! That kind of technology is restricted to the military." He said nothing; simply gazed back at her. She exhaled sharply and nodded slowly. "Okay, I'm impressed." She glanced toward the girl, seated before the tunnel at the far end of the room. "You're sure it can't hurt her?"

  "Charliebo won't hurt anyone, or anything, that I've okayed. She'll be fine. And even if she never needs to call on him for help, she'll feel a lot safer knowing that he's there. It's like the imaginary gun your father put under your pillow when you were a kid for you to use against the night monsters."

  "What?"

  "Never mind. I've got two days off. What are you doing for dinner tonight?"

  The look on her face revealed her surprise. Truth be told, he was a little stunned at the alacrity of the offer himself.

  It was a month later, as he was sitting in front of the active tunnel in his office downtown, scrolling through the relevant background information on a case he and Hyaki had been assigned to investigate, when the declaration brazenly splashed itself across infovoid before him.

  REVENGE FOR THE MOCK!

  It startled him, and Angel Cardenas was not one to be easily startled. It sat there, glowing softly before his eyes, the letters floating in the darkness of the tunnel. His first reaction was that it was a joke, probably concocted by Hyaki or some of the boys in Records.

  But a quick trace failed to identify the sender or the source, and a deeper probe quickly lost itself in the nether mists and mysteries of the Big Box. One thing he was able to determine: irregardless of who had sent it, it had not originated within the Department.

  That did not preclude it being a gag perpetrated by a friend or colleague. Even so ... He made a record of it and the relevant back-trail, as far as he was able to trace it. Could it have originated with one of The Mock's subordinates? Most of them were incarcerated, awaiting trial or already serving time. But there was no guarantee that the sweep that had been carried out based on the detailed information supplied by Katla Mockerkin had caught absolutely everyone.

  There was the hostile gram, of course. The one that had sought the capture or elimination of The Mock's daughter. The one that had almost drowned him at the Mock's underwater command center in Southeast Texas. That mollysphere had been dismantled and dissected, providing a rich lode of infocrunch to law enforcement authorities in ten countries.

  Had the central molly spit out a last, vengeful command prior to being severed from its box and extracted? Retribution was not a quality that was usually attributed to inert boot grams. Suppose some last-minute, apostate permutation of The Mock's main molly had escaped detection, and from its base in Belize or Barbados or Botswana was contemplating vengeance against the federale responsible for the termination of its core activities?

  It was a thoroughly outrageous notion. Few would have granted it even a moment's credence. But Cardenas had spent more time probing the Big Box than most, and had seen the worst of what it could do. It was a strange land, the Box. A place where no one, even those who added to it and maintained it and used it on a daily basis, entirely understood the nature of what they were working with.
A place that was continuously evolving. Usually in concert with humankind—but sometimes, according to whom you chose to believe, without it. Who could say what was and was not possible within the mysterious, half-magical mathematical milieu that was the Box?

  It did not matter whether someone had a gun pointed at him or a gram: he took any and all threats seriously. He would treat this one no differently. If it was a gag, he would have words with the perpetrators. If it was a gram, he would have input.

  Picking up the vorec, he began to fight back.

  The leaves of brown came tumbling down. Harmony Francis sat in the window seat of her second-floor Vermont bedroom watching them pile up on the lawn outside the house. It was a quiet September Sunday morning. Her adopted siblings were still asleep. They slept longer than she did because they were used to quiet Sunday mornings. Since she had enjoyed very few in her life, they were still a novelty to Harmony. As such, she did not want to miss or waste a single one of them.

  Her Uncle Jim walked into view, powerake in hand, and proceeded to embark on the eternal New England early-fall outing known as mustering the leaves. Downstairs, she knew, Aunt Loise would be synthing batter for blueberry waffles to go with the eggs and bacon and chocolate whale milk.

  A sound drew her attention away from the window. Looking down, she saw a six-legged machine the size of her thumb standing on the carpet next to her left foot. Four tiny lenses peered back up at her as the miniscule head cocked curiously to one side. A soft, continuous, and not unpleasant mechanical purr emanated from the device.

  "Well," she exclaimed in quiet surprise, "where did you come from? Out of that mouse hole in the attic?" A familiar child's ditty sprang unbidden into her head. How many wugs would a wise wug whip if a wise wug would whip wugs?

  Wugs watched, but did not interact. That was the commonly accepted wisdom. Instead of simply staring, or withdrawing, this one approached. Aunt Loise would panic if she saw it, Harmony knew, and Uncle Jim would probably take a swing at it with the nearest shovel or shoe. After a moment's hesitation, she reached down. The wug immediately scuttled forward and into her palm. Lifting it up, she stared wonderingly into its quartet of miniature ruby-red lenses.