Tek Vengeance Read online

  “I have to go with her on this trip to Berlin. If you want to fire me, well, then maybe—”

  “I’m not suggesting that. But, damn it, Jake, this is an important case for us. The fee is nice and we can probably get other lucrative jobs out of the paper. On top of which, Will Sparey is one of your dearest buddies and—”

  “We were friends,” acknowledged Jake. “And, sure, I knew Jean Marie when she was a kid. Any other time, I’d head straight for Rio.”

  Bascom contemplated the distant grey ceiling. “You better take a look at something.”

  Gomez said, “I sense a dirty trick coming.”

  “Not at all, nope,” the chief assured them. “However, earlier today Vargas sent over a vidcaz.” He took three steps ahead, then three back, studying his feet all the while. “It’s quite heartbreaking, Jake, so I’ve been debating whether or not even to—”

  “A vidcaz of what?”

  “Apparently Jean Marie Sparey summoned up enough strength sometime yesterday, poor little thing, to gasp out a brief message to you. You don’t have to watch it, but ... ”

  Jake rubbed his palms together slowly. “Okay,” he said, “let’s see the damn thing.”

  The young woman stretched out on the hospital bed was gaunt, with deep shadows underscoring her eyes and her cheekbones. Her wasted body was hooked up, by way of an intricacy of twisting tubes and curling wires, to a complex assortment of glittering medical gadgets that surrounded her white servobed.

  “That’s Jean Marie Sparey.” Bascom nodded at the large vidwall screen.

  “Christ,” said Jake, “what’s wrong with her?”

  “She’ll explain.”

  Jean Marie’s skeletal right hand began to flutter. Finally she touched the control panel on the frame of the bed. The bed made a whirring sound and elevated her to a near sitting position.

  “I ... sure hope ... that this reaches you ... Uncle Jake,” the young woman said in a thin, faraway voice. “You don’t mind ... my calling you ... Uncle Jake, do you ... the way I used to?”

  Jake moved closer to the screen.

  Jean Marie continued in her faint voice, “They’re letting me make this ... I sure hope ... you can come see me ... Uncle Jake ... I’m a real mess, huh? It’s ... it’s mostly from doing Tek ... had a lot of seizures and ... I really ... truly ... futzed up my body and ... anyway, please ... I must ... talk to you.”

  Jake was only a few feet from the image of the dying girl.

  “My father is ... alive ... and I can tell you how to ... get to him ... I want to ... see him again ... before ... well, you understand, Uncle Jake ... You can bring him here to me ... but there isn’t ... much time ... ” Her eyelids flickered, then drifted shut.

  Someone unseen said, “Very well, that’s enough.”

  “No, I have to convince Uncle Jake to come ... he’s the only one I can trust ... ”

  “I’m sorry, we must stop.”

  The big screen went blank.

  “Just as I said,” murmured Bascom, clearing his throat. “Heartbreaking.”

  Jake turned toward him. “Okay, I’ll go see her,” he said, his voice not quite under control. “And I’ll get the search for her father started.”

  “Good, that’s fine.”

  “But I have to be back here in Greater LA in time to go to Berlin with Beth.”

  Bascom nodded. “I’ll guarantee you that,” he said.

  4

  JAKE WAS IN THE bedroom, absently packing a suitcase, when his son came home to the new seaside condo they shared in the Malibu Sector. It was late afternoon.

  He heard something fall over and something smash. Calling, “Dan, what’s happening?” he ran down the hall to the living room.

  Dan, a lanky young man of fifteen, was standing in the center of the bright room. He was scowling down at a small tipped over plastable and the broken voxclock lying sprawled beside it.

  “Hi, Dad.” He came over to hug Jake.

  Jake returned the hug. “So?”

  “I kicked over the table.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I was pissed off about something.” He dropped his school gear on the low white sofa. “Sorry.”

  “Something I ought to know about?”

  “Not really, no.” Dan unfastened his SoCal State Police Academy tunic, slipped out of it and tossed it in the direction of the sofa. “I didn’t expect you to be home this early.”

  “You wouldn’t have booted the furniture if you’d known I was around, huh?”

  “Probably not, nope.”

  Jake put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “C’mon—what’s wrong, Dan?”

  Moving away from him, Dan bent and righted the table. “It was just a thing that happened in one of my classes at the academy today,” he said. “I ... well, I suppose you’ll hear about it.”

  “It’ll spoil the surprise,” said Jake, sitting on the sofa, “but you might as well fill me in now.”

  Dan gathered up the clock, depositing the remains on the uprighted table. “Do you know an asshole named Dick Farber?”

  “Sure, we were SoCal State cops together. Back when,” he answered. “Dick and I, though, were never what you’d call close friends.”

  “I deduced as much,” said his son. “Farber was a guest lecturer in our Interrogation Procedures class this afternoon. When the TA-bot gave him the roster and he saw my name, he wanted to know if I was related to you. I said you were my father and ... Well, he made some remarks.”

  “About my having spent time as a prisoner up in the Freezer?”

  “That was one of the topics. Farber thinks you were guilty of Tek dealing.” Dan’s hands fisted at his sides. “He hinted, you know, that if it hadn’t been for the influence of corrupt people like Bascom you’d still be on ice up there.”

  “Even though I was cleared of all those charges after I got out, you’re still going to run into people who’ll tell you I was really guilty,” he told his son. “Farber’s one of them.”

  “I know,” said Dan. “You warned me when I first told you I wanted to go into police work, that there’d be cops who don’t think much of you. And, since they didn’t care for you, they probably weren’t going to be too nice to me.”

  “Looks like that’s turning out to be so. Why is the academy going to contact me?”

  “Oh, because they have a halfassed rule about cadets punching teachers. Even guest lecturers.”

  Jake grinned. “You hit Farber?”

  Dan poked at his own midsection. “Right here. Twice.”

  Getting up, Jake said, “Okay, I’ll have a talk with a couple of the people I know at the academy.”

  “You don’t have to fight my battles. I just wanted you to know what—”

  “Farber was out of line, too, Dan. I’ll get this straightened out. Okay?”

  “Sure, okay. Thanks, Dad.”

  “This probably won’t affect your standing at school. But, hey, don’t slug any more of my former colleagues.”

  “Try not to. But that asshole made me mad.”

  “I understand.” Jake moved toward the hall. “I’ll be leaving in about an hour. Going up to Berkeley to see Beth.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “Not to Beth, but Gomez and I have to leave for Rio de Janeiro early tomorrow. I want to see Beth, spend some time with her, before I go.”

  “Rio?”

  Jake outlined the new Cosmos assignment to his son, explaining why he felt obliged to go down there to Brazil.

  When he finished, Dan told him, “I can see why you feel you have to do this.”

  “Yeah, except this isn’t the right time.”

  “If I know you, you’ll find this Sparey quickly.”

  “Maybe,” said Jake. “The thing is—Oh, hell.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Jake shook his head.

  “No, you look like something’s worrying you.”

  “Only a feeling,” said Jake.
“A feeling that I should stay with Beth and not let her out of my sight.”

  5

  IT WAS RAINING IN the hills above Berkeley, a quiet persistent rain that fell straight down through the deepening twilight. The beams of the landing lights of Jake’s skycar cut through it, illuminating the black surface of the parking rectangle next to Beth’s hillside cottage.

  He set the skycar down, remained in the driveseat.

  From out the speaker on his dash came a voice. “You’ve passed primary clearance, Mr. Cardigan,” it announced. “Now, if you would, please, exit your vehicle. Remain standing beside it with your hands clasped behind your neck.”

  Jake complied. The darkening night was cold, the rain hitting at him was chill.

  From a kiosk at the edge of the landing area came a copperplated robot. “Good evening, Mr. Cardigan,” he said. “As you’re aware, these security procedures serve to—”

  “Honestly, Desmo, you know it’s Jake as well as I do.” Beth, a rain cape draped over her slim shoulders, had come running out a side door of her cottage.

  Jake smiled at her. “It’s okay,” he said.

  “All this rigamarole,” complained the pretty, darkhaired young woman. “It really gives me a pain in several strategic locations.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Kittridge,” apologized Desmo/1343-K. “Yet we all have to follow certain—”

  “What’s the fracas about?” A tall black man, carrying a plas umbrella and a drawn lazgun, stepped through the hedge surrounding the parking area. “Oh, hi, Jake.”

  “Evening, Emmett.”

  Beth turned to the International Drug Control Agency man. “We all know this is Jake,” she said. “I was simply trying to save some time.”

  Emmett Neal frowned at her. “I’d appreciate it, Beth, really now, if you’d let us do our job without—”

  “Go ahead,” Jake invited the robot. “Check me out.”

  Beth, making an impatient noise, folded her arms. “Okay, run your tests and establish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jake is actually Jake.”

  The copperplated robot quickly checked Jake’s retinal patterns, his fingerprints and his DNA-ID. “He’s Jake Cardigan,” he announced, stepping back.

  “No kidding?” Beth laughed, taking hold of Jake’s arm. “May I drag him inside now, Emmett?”

  “Sure, Beth. Just keep in mind that all this red tape serves an import—”

  “I know. Forgive me for butting in.” Squeezing Jake’s arm, she led him inside her warm, bright cottage.

  He kissed her one more time. “I’ve missed you.”

  They were standing in the parlor, her fallen rain cape lying at their feet.

  She said, “It’s only been a week.”

  “That can be a hell of a long time.”

  “Yes, I know. I often wish they’d let me work at a lab closer to Greater LA.” Putting her hands on his shoulders, she moved a step back from him. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Nothing beyond what I told you on the vidphone.”

  “You seem sad.”

  “I’m not sad,” he assured her, attempting a grin. “Never am when I’m with you.”

  “I understand why you have to go to Brazil,” she said. “And since you’ll be back before I have to leave, there’s really nothing to worry about.”

  Jake pulled her closer to him again. “Could be this has to do with my getting older,” he admitted. “I’m feeling very vulnerable lately and I worry about the people I love—you, Dan, Gomez. Worry that something terrible is going to happen to you.”

  “Eventually something terrible happens to everybody,” she said. “You’ve got to get over the notion, however, that your main purpose in life is to keep that from occurring. It’s much too big a job, Jake.”

  “I suppose.”

  “I was going to suggest that we have dinner now—but why don’t we go to bed first?”

  “A fine idea,” he said.

  Through the oneway viewindow of the parlor you could see down across the rainswept city to the San Francisco Bay beyond. The lights of Berkeley and of the craft on the bay were blurred by the rain.

  Jake rested his cup of neocaf on the table next to the sofa he was sharing with Beth. “I suppose there’s no way you can get out of going to Berlin?”

  “My father’s on trial for selling out to Sonny Hokori and some other choice Teklords,” she reminded him. “I’m a major witness, not somebody they’re going to excuse.”

  “Even so, I’d—”

  “There’s no use postponing things. I want to get this over with,” she told him. “Once my part in the trial is done with, I can get back here to the lab and finish up my work on the anti-Tek system.”

  “How close are you to finishing?”

  “Hopefully just a few weeks.”

  “After that you can come back to Greater LA.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Standing, Jake walked over to the window. “If only this damn Brazil job hadn’t come up.”

  “You wouldn’t feel right if you didn’t go help the Sparey girl.”

  “That’s the line Bascom used on me, but his motives aren’t exactly pure.”

  “Sure, he’s crass. He’s also right this time, though.”

  Jake nodded.

  Beth said, “Keep in mind that you’ll be back in plenty of time to make the trip with us.”

  “Us?”

  She laughed. “I mean with me and Agents Neal, Griggs and McBernie,” she said, “plus the rest of the IDCA security people the IDCA has assigned to looking after me.”

  “Do you really have faith in these guys? In their ability to protect you?”

  Leaving the sofa, she moved to his side. “They can be bothersome, but they’re efficient,” she said. “Is there something you know that you’re not telling me?”

  “Nothing, nope.”

  “You act as though you’ve heard about somebody’s plot to do me harm.”

  He grinned, shaking his head. “It’s only that I love you. That makes me worry about what might happen.”

  She caught hold of his hand. “Okay, we both know what the Tek cartels are capable of,” she said. “But keep in mind, okay, that I’m also not bad at taking care of myself. You ought to know that by now.”

  “I do, yeah,” he said. “I seem to be developing mother hen instincts. That’s what you get for letting an aging cop into your life.”

  Smiling, she said, “From now on let me do the worrying.”

  Toward dawn, when thin grey light began to show at the curved ceiling panels high above the bed, Jake woke up.

  During the night Beth had moved away from his side and was now sleeping near the opposite edge.

  Jake’s mouth was dry and there was a tightness across his chest. Watching Beth, he tried to recall the dream that had frightened him into waking. But he couldn’t recapture any details, only a blurred remembrance of being somewhere that was filled with an awful silence.

  He sat up, continuing to watch the sleeping young woman. She was breathing evenly, lying with the right side of her face against the pillow and her fisted hand pressed to her chin. Her bare left shoulder rose and fell gently.

  “I love you, Beth,” he said quietly.

  Then, leaning, he kissed her on the shoulder.

  She murmured softly, but didn’t awaken.

  6

  AS THE PASSARO AIRWAYS skyliner went climbing up through the morning, Gomez said, “Well, I think it’s important.”

  “Not to me.” Jake was occupying the window seat.

  His partner leaned slightly out into the aisle, eyes narrowing. “You’re not using the old cabeza,” he said. “Whether the lovely lady attendant assigned to our section of this airship is an android or a true human—that’s muy importante.”

  “To you.”

  “Okay, say that the lovely ravenhaired lass yonder is indeed an android,” continued Gomez, watching her. “Then, which is not beyond the realm of possib
ility, especially considering the way she’s been eyeing me and simpering from the moment I stepped aboard, suppose that she and I arrange a rendezvous in Rio de Janeiro—after, of course, I’ve diligently helped you clean up the Sparey business. And suppose further that my current wife finds out about it and asks for a divorce. I’d hate, amigo, to have my marriage go flooey just because I shacked up with a machine.”

  “If that flight attendant were an android, Sid, she’d have to wear a tag identifying her as such. It’s the law.”

  “It could’ve fallen off.”

  “Unlikely.”

  “Or suppose the lass is a kamikaze, one of those assassinating andies so favored by the Tek gangs? If I were to give her nothing more than a cordial, avuncular pat on the backside—kapow! We explode and probably blow an unsightly hole in the side of this crate.”

  “You ought to bring stuff to read on these trips,” suggested Jake, slouching further in his seat. “That would distract you, keep you from fantasizing.”

  “You have to admit she has flawless skin.”

  “Didn’t notice.”

  “And perfect hair.”

  “You can buy perfect hair at any mall.”

  “To me she seems much too attractive to be a mere human.”

  “Next time she passes, ask her.”

  “Questions like that are difficult to put.”

  “Well, at least spare me further speculations.”

  Gomez sighed. “It’s tough having an obtuse partner.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That the purpose of this sparkling dialogue, amigo,” admitted his partner, “has been to lift you out of the glum mood I find you in.”

  “I’m not glum.”

  “No? You’d have to brighten up considerably before you could even get hired as a professional mourner.”

  Jake straightened up. “Shows, huh?”

  “You having trouble with Beth?”

  “Everything was fine in Berkeley.”

  “Then you must be worrying that some of our Tek buddies will try to hurt her.”

  Jake said, “You’ve been married several times.”

  “Verdad, although beside the point.”