Alan Dean Foster The Mocking Program (v5.0) (pdf)

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woman he sought before her schedule was booked. That was assum-
ing, he knew, that she was onsite now. Just like the maquiladora
plants, the amative establishments that served their employees oper-
ated on a twenty-four-hour work schedule.
A detour heads-up appeared in front of him. Following its in-
structions, he turned down a side walkway. He had gone less than
twenty meters before it struck him that something was not as it
should be with his fellow pedestrians. Probably no one else would
have noticed it. But an intuit s schooling involved the sharpening of
all the senses, not just those commonly employed by a fellow human.
The people moving around him, enjoying the warm evening air,
looked normal, acted normal, sounded normal. Only one component
of normalcy, in fact, was missing.
None of them smelled.
Stopping, he reached out to grab the arm of a solitary, well-
dressed oldster who was heading in the opposite direction. His fingers
closed around a fistful of air. At the same time, the old man smiled
wickedly at him and vanished. So did the couple approaching from
84 Alan Dean Foster
behind. So did the walls, and street, and the glowing signs advertis-
ing the delights of the amatory establishments he was passing.
Except he was not passing well-lit public businesses. He was
not on a designated detour, but in an alley. Not proceeding accord-
ing to a route prescribed by the department of public works, but
heading down an increasingly narrow and isolated serviceway that
was little more than a crack between buildings. The detour was an il-
lusion. A very adroit one at that, he reflected as he turned to retrace
his steps. Nothing more than an expensive miragoo.
The woman holding the projector that she had just switched off
slipped it into the small pack that rode on her back. Silver-and-
niobium earrings jangled softly as she brushed long black hair away
from her face. Standing next to her was a second Amerind, a tall
male. The headband encircling his forehead and holding back his
dark hair flashed a steady stream of readily recognizable, three-di-
mensional southwestern symbols. Reaching up, he idly brushed the
tips of his fingers across one side of the band.
Harmless, virtually touristic symbols for rain, for the four sacred
plants (corn, beans, squash, and tobacco), for lightning and for thun-
der, for Mother Earth and Father Sky, abruptly gave way to an omi-
nous m�lange of glowing lines of lightning crossed with knives,
spears, lasers all dripping ethereally luminous blood. Cardenas rec-
ognized the symbols immediately. The man and woman were
Inzini the Southwest Amerindian equivalent of the Japanese Yakuza
or the Italian Mafia.
Begun as a pseudo-religious organization back around the turn of
the century, they had spread their influence throughout the Four
Corners area and beyond, riding a wave of prosperity and illegal in-
come born of the explosive development of the Strip. Disdaining
Yakuza-style tattoos in favor of far more modern and flexible pro-
jectible symbology, they were deeply involved in illegal immigration,
credit laundering, trade in endangered species, and half a dozen other
antisoc activities. Essentially leaderless and free-wafting, they had
THE MOCKING PROGRAM 85
proven exceptionally difficult for the NFP to suppress. Known in
Navajo as the hooghan haz �n�g�� n�t chi bee ��n�ziinii, or family of evil
spirits, friends and enemies alike called them simply the Inzini.
The pistol in the man s hand was not as versatile as the one Car-
denas wore in his shoulder holster. It could not dissemble, mask, or
drug a target. Packing explosive shells, it could only kill. The assassin
was ready to use it, the Inspector knew. He did not have to wonder.
Intent and capability were amply evident in every facet of the man s
posture, in his respiration, in his eyes.
That s an expensive little toy, he began conversationally, refer-
ring to the portable projector the woman had just put away. Usually
they don t fool me, but I was preoccupied.
Don t move, the man ordered him. Raise your hands and put
them on top of your head. Don t lock the fingers. If you reach inside
your jacket or your pants, I ll kill you. If you move to touch your
jacket or your pants, I ll kill you. Keep your movements slow and
steady. Don t touch one leg with the other.
As he spoke, the woman had drawn a weapon of her own. Ap-
proaching Cardenas, she gave him a thorough pat-down, removing
first his own gun and then his spinner. She proceeded to check the
latter.
It s open, but only sending location. He didn t have a chance to
get anything off, she told her companion. As Cardenas looked on,
she slapped a para-site over the unit and used it to finger in instruc-
tions. When she had finished her work, she slipped the device back
into Cardenas s pocket. She did not smile. The override gram I en-
tered will tell your station monitor that everything s fine and normal
for the next hour. Things will stay that way in actuality as long as you
cooperate.
What do you want?
You re NFP.
He nodded. Inspector Angel Cardenas. I wish I could say it was
a pleasure to meet you, Mr. and Ms. . . . ?
86 Alan Dean Foster
The man gestured in the direction of the real street. You spent
some time talking with a shop owner in Mocceca s Mall. We have just
come from there, where we had a short chat with him. Mention
of the recently visited shopkeeper jogged Cardenas s memory. He rec-
ognized them now: they were the same couple who had been sitting
on the porch behind Mashupo Mingas s shop.
While he had been interviewing the shopkeeper, they had been
watching him.
We know that you are in charge of the search for a woman
named Surtsey Mockerkin, who is wafting with her daughter. Please
tell us what the proprietor of the shop told you. If you will do that
for us, we will just lie you down for half a day. Straight narcolep,
nothing serious or addictive. He indicated the building to their left.
This is a comfortable place. We ll rent you a day room and inform
the establishment s administrator that you are sleeping off a good
time. No one will bother you. When you wake up, you ll feel more
rested than you have been in weeks, and no harm done. By then
we will have completed our follow-up on the information you pro-
vide and gone on our way.
The muzzle of the compact pistol shifted slightly. If you do not
tell us what we want to know, I will have to begin shooting your var-
ious appendages. Eventually, you will tell us. Why not spare yourself
the pain and physical damage and save my ammunition?
It was a nice speech, Cardenas thought. Intended to be reassur-
ing. Except that it was a serene, efficiently delivered lie. As soon as
they had the information they sought, they would kill him. Having
made no effort to conceal their faces, they could not let him live to
report their actions and presence. He would be shot and left in the
alley to be scavenged, just as Wayne Brummel-Anderson had been.
All this he could tell from the look in the couple s eyes, from the way
they held themselves, and from the subtlest of inflections in the man s
voice.
If he had half a minute he could expel the override gram from his
THE MOCKING PROGRAM 87
spinner and call for assistance. Since the device knew his location at
all times, help would be forthcoming within minutes. The narrow
serviceway offered no place to hide, and the walls were too high and
too slick to scale. The alley was a dead end in more ways than one.
Hands atop his head, he tried to stall for time. If he could some-
how distract them long enough to get a finger on the spinner, or
speak to its vorec but the woman was as attentive to his movements
as was her companion. If he so much as twitched wrong, they could
easily shoot him in the arm that was moving. That would prevent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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