TekWar Read online

  “You and me both, buddy.” The aircab climbed up and went chugging away, passing over dozens of similar small parks.

  The plaslites planted in the faketurf of Jake’s park made the leaves of the trees—all of which were real—glow bright green. The mechanical birds were still twittering the same song they’d sung four years ago.

  “At least one thing hasn’t changed while I was away.” Jake started for the stairway that led down to the elevator room.

  A very handsome android butler, dressed in gray livery, was walking a platinum-haired poodle along a hedge-lined path. He looked human, except for his eyes, which, in obvious need of repair, were blinking much too rapidly. “Evening, gov,” he said in a very realistic voice.

  “Good evening.” At the entry door Jake pressed the palm of his right hand to the IDscan. Six seconds went by and then the tiny voxbox mounted just below the scanner barked, “Cardigan—22C—enter.”

  The metal door quivered and slid aside.

  Jake crossed into the elevator area. The door of the cage on the far right in the row of three opened and he stepped in. “Twenty-two,” he requested.

  The elevator recognized him. “Good evening, Mr. Cardigan,” it said amiably from its overhead voxbox. “I trust you had a nice day.”

  “Matter of fact,” answered Jake, grinning, “today has been quite a bit better than most of them lately.”

  “Glad to hear that.”

  The cage dropped swiftly down to the twenty-second level of the underground condo complex. It opened its door, cautioning, “Watch your step, Mr. Cardigan. Good evening.”

  As Jake neared his door, he heard odd noises and scurrying sounds from inside. Drawing his lazgun, he opened the door and dived inside.

  5

  A SQUAT SILVERY SERVOMECH was vacuuming the rug, a taller round one with a half dozen long spidery arms was dusting the cassette shelves.

  There was no one in the living room.

  Jake entered, scanning the place and wondering why the servos had picked this particular time to tidy up. “Kate?” he said tentatively, then repeated it more loudly. “Kate?”

  Gun still in his hand, Jake shut the door behind him and crossed the carpet. Things looked just about the same as they had four years ago, except the apartment computer terminal sat on a new stand. The carpeting in the hall was new, too, and a shimmering shade of blue.

  “Kate? It’s me—Jake.” He moved slowly along the hallway.

  No response.

  Behind him in the living room the servomechs finished up their chores, put themselves away in their wall compartments.

  The master bedroom hadn’t changed much either. The wide circular bed was neatly made. New spread, some glittery kind of cloth Jake wasn’t familiar with. “Probably one of those new synthetics from the Moon Colony mills,” he decided.

  He touched the palm of his hand to a yellow-tinted patch of wall across from the bed. The IDpanel gave a ping of recognition and a portion of the wall slid aside. The interior light squares turned on. All of Jake’s clothes—the civilian stuff anyway, since his uniforms had been turned in after his conviction—were hanging there on two long lucite rods.

  “But Kate’s things are gone.” Unless she was storing her wardrobe someplace else these days. “That’s possible, I guess. In four years people can change their habits.”

  But down in his son’s room there was nothing. No bed, no clothes, no clutter. A blank, white-walled room, the carpeting smelling faintly of self-cleaning chemicals.

  “Mr. Cardigan, Mr. Cardigan.” It was the voice of the condo computer calling him from the living room.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Mr. Cardigan, I have an important message from your wife—Mrs. Kathleen McRobb Cardigan.”

  “That wife, huh?” He went striding down the hall. “Glad you finally remembered.” Jake perched on a sofa arm, eyeing the small black terminal.

  “Mrs. Kathleen McRobb Cardigan regrets to inform you that she has divorced you, Mr. Jonathan Cardigan, Jr.,” said the terminal. It sounded like it had the same voice as the terminal who’d given him the farewell pep talk up in the Freezer. “That occurred exactly two years and sixteen days ago in the Civil Court of the State of Southern California, Pasadena Sector Annex, Robojudge XX-30F-227 presiding. Divorce granted under the Absent Criminal Act of 2107.”

  Jake had started to stand, but he sat back down. He noticed the gun in his hand, leaned and placed it carefully on the plastiglass coffee table. “Two years ago—why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “It is not possible to convey information of any kind to a comatose prisoner incarcerated in the—”

  “Why didn’t somebody tell me today? That silver-plated Winger, for instance.”

  “That I do not know,” replied the voxbox. “Your former wife further wishes you to be informed that she no longer resides in the State of Southern California or in the United States of America as a whole. She and your former son, Daniel Jonathan Cardigan, have resettled in Mexico and—”

  “Former son?”

  “—are both in the best of health. They do not, neither of them, at this point in time wish to communicate directly with you. At some later date, should their feelings about the suitability of contact with you change to any degree, you shall be notified by an authorized legal representative of the former Mrs. Cardigan.”

  “That’s fine, great.”

  “This condo was transferred entirely to your name at the time of the divorce decree and is now yours to do with as you wish, Mr. Cardigan. Half of your joint savings remain in the Banx system, and once you have reactivated your Banx card, under the terms set forth in the Resurrected Criminals, Returned Lunatics and Pardoned Rapists Act of 2097, you will have access to $41,684.87. That amount includes interest accumulated over four years plus half the amount realized from the sale of your aircar as well as what was realized from your adjusted Police Employee Retirement Plan. This message was set to be delivered to you upon your return to—”

  “You said four years,” cut in Jake, “meaning Kate must’ve known I was coming out today. How’d she find out?”

  “I do not know. This latest version of the message from Mrs. Cardigan was fed into our system at four P.M. today, SoCal time.”

  “From where?”

  “The place of origin is logged in simply as ‘Somewhere in Mexico.’ ”

  “Zero in on that, if you can, and get me more details.”

  After a few seconds the computer told him, “I am unable to obtain any further information.”

  “You don’t have an address or vidphone number for my wife—excuse it, former wife?”

  “Such information is unavailable at this time. Can I provide you any further service or—”

  “The phone.” Jake was looking around the living room. “Where’s it stored these days?”

  “The same place. I will activate it.”

  A panel in the far wall slid silently open, revealing the phone alcove. It was furnished with a padded metal chair, a stand and a vidphone.

  “Pink?” Jake crossed to it.

  “The former Mrs. Cardigan switched from black phone to pink phone three years ago.”

  Shrugging one shoulder, Jake stepped into the alcove and seated himself facing the small rectangular screen.

  The heavyset black woman shook her head again. “Wish I could, Jake,” she said apologetically.

  Frowning at the image on the phonescreen, he said, “Sure, I understand, Onita.”

  “When you were with the SCSP it was different,” the middle-aged woman explained. “But now—well, now your status ain’t exactly fragrant anymore. Besides which, Pacific Videocom is a lot tougher than it was back in your law and order days about giving out restricted numbers.”

  “I’ll get Kate’s number some other way, thanks.”

  She smiled. “Hey, anyway, I’m glad you’re out, Jake. You figuring to stay out?”

  “That’s one of my major goals in life,” he assured he
r, grinning and killing the call. Jake sank back in the stiff chair for a few seconds, massaging the bridge of his nose. “Not going to be as easy as I thought.”

  “Beg pardon?” said the condo computer terminal.

  “Wasn’t talking to you.”

  “Perhaps I might summon a house medic for you?”

  “No need, nope.” He straightened, punched out another number.

  A large dented robot, his bare metal torso scribbled with an assortment of lewd graffiti in various basic colors, appeared on the screen. “Varney the Vampire’s Bar & Grill, Santa Monica Sector. Yeah, what?”

  “I want to contact Newsboy O’Hearn.”

  “Where you been, asshole?”

  “Away.”

  “Well, so is O’Hearn. The asshole vanished without a frigging trace three years ago,” said the bartender robot. “Theory at the time was he maybe got himself teleported to an especially faraway place by some competitor or a disgruntled hoodlum. Anything else?”

  “How about Cyborg Slim?”

  “You could maybe try Mom’s Café down in the Manhattan Beach Sector. Say, you’re Cardigan, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Some go in, some come out. That’s the way of the frigging world when you come to think of it. See you.” He broke the connection.

  After sighing slightly, Jake tried another number.

  Mom herself, a frail woman of fifty, answered. “Cardigan! Welcome back to the living,” she said. “You look great, just the same—but that’s to be expected, seeing as you been in suspended animation. Myself, I’m not looking so good.”

  “I won’t lie to you, Mom, you’re not. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure, but about two years ago I took a strong and violent dislike to the kind of food I serve in this joint and I don’t seem to be able to eat much any longer.”

  “Try dining out.”

  “Naw, I can’t do that, Jake. I’m much too busy cooking here to have time to go out anywhere.”

  “I’m looking for Cyborg Slim.”

  “He’s not in his old line of work any longer,” Mom said. “Cops picked Slim up for info siphoning about six months back. He got sentenced to twenty-five years of amnesia. They did that to him up at the state rehab in the Oxnard Sector and now the poor bastard doesn’t remember a damn thing about his former trade—and Slim was one of the best computer tappers in the business. He’s driving a skytruck for a hydroponic tomato ranch in the San Diego Sector and has this half-assed smile on his face all the time.”

  “Maybe I can use Suicide Smith.”

  “Oh, you haven’t heard about him either, have you? Suicide committed suicide last Xmas,” Mom told him. “Here we always thought the guy was kidding about wanting to do himself in. I mean, you wouldn’t nickname a guy Suicide if you knew he was really going to do it someday. Well, he did it.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Jake. “I need a phone number that may be fairly well protected. Anybody else you can suggest, Mom?”

  “Wiz Robinson’s still around, Jake.”

  Jake considered that. “I don’t know, he’s not as reliable as—”

  “True, but on the other hand Wiz is above the ground and his brains haven’t been frazzled.”

  “There is that about him. Okay, where can I find him?”

  “Let me do that for you,” she volunteered. “You at home?”

  “Same place.” He gave her his number. “I’d like to get the number soon as I can.”

  “I’ll track Wiz down and have him contact you,” she promised. “Try to relax and don’t get excited. That’s the secret of a successful life.”

  “I’ve been doing more than my share of relaxing lately.” He hung up.

  6

  THE VIDPHONE SCREEN REMAINED blank. “You’re looking good, Jake, looking very good all things considered.”

  “Wish I could say the same for you, Wiz. Why the blackout?”

  “Reasons, I got my reasons,” came the whispering voice of the tapper. “Let us simply say, Jake, that Wiz Robinson is lying low.”

  “Okay by me. Now listen, Wiz, what I need is—”

  “Your opinion of my abilities hasn’t been very high, not high at all. Tonight, however, it’s going to change. I have anticipated, making some clever deductions from the hints that Mom dropped, your request and gone to work.”

  “What are you telling me, Wiz—that you have the vidphone number I want?”

  “Exactly, Jake, that’s exactly what I am telling you,” the blank screen informed him. “You want the phone number of your erstwhile missus—isn’t that so?”

  “Yeah, I do. Have you got it?”

  “Of course I do, of course. The little lady—quite a looker from all accounts—is residing in Mexico, across the border in the state of Quintana Roo. Do you need the exact spelling of this unusual and musical name?”

  “No, I’ve been there.”

  “Spent your youth across the border, yes, it comes back to me now,” continued Wiz. “The little lady—who continues to call herself Kathleen Cardigan, by the way, if you want to take that as a sign of anything, although most of my exes still go around dubbed Mrs. Robinson and they, all and sundry, hate me like vile poison. The little lady’s present phone number and address are as follows.” He provided Jake with a Mexican vidphone number and the address of the small villa where Kate was living.

  “I appreciate this, Wiz.”

  “Think nothing of it, Jake. It’s merely another example of the sort of first-class service I provide my customers, even customers who have been going around saying I’m a second-rater.”

  “What about my son—is he living there, too?”

  “The lad is away at school, but I don’t as yet have full details. Do you want that stuff, too?”

  “Want all the information I can get on them,” Jake told the blank screen. “Now, how much do I owe you, Wiz?”

  “Nothing, not a peso,” replied the informant. “This has been a free sample, Jake, a demo of my exceptional gifts in the area of unauthorized-information retrieval. Should you want all I can gather on the kid, it’ll cost you two hundred dollars.”

  Jake said, “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  “Might there be, Jake, anything else I could unearth for you?”

  “I can use anything on why I was paroled from the Freezer.”

  “Noted, noted and jotted down in my infallible memory,” said Wiz. “I bid you now a fond good evening.”

  “Good night, Wiz, and thanks.”

  Jake clicked off the phone. He pushed back in the chair and stood.

  He slowly circled the living room, first with his hands in his pockets and then with them behind his back. “Go ahead and call her,” he urged himself after five minutes of pacing.

  Jake took a deep breath, returned to the alcove. He punched out the number Wiz had given him.

  The zigzag rainbow patterns indicating an out-of-the-country call flashed briefly across the phonescreen. Then a face appeared. It was the nearly blank metallic face of an inexpensive answering ’bot—one eye and a voxbox. “Cardigan residence,” the robot said.

  “Kate Cardigan, please.” Maybe the fact that she was still using the name was a good sign. Meaning she still felt a link with him.

  “Identify yourself, if you will.”

  “I’m Jake Cardigan.”

  The single white eye glowed, briefly, green. “Please stand by, Mr. Cardigan.”

  The robot faded, its image replaced by blackness. Thirty seconds went by.

  “Kate,” Jake said when she appeared. “Listen, I—”

  “Hi, Jake. I figured you’d be able to track me down eventually and so I’m making this tape for when you call,” his wife—make that former wife—was saying.

  He leaned forward, frowning, watching the picture on the phone-screen. Kate had changed in four years. She was thinner for one thing, at least ten pounds lighter. Her auburn hair was cut differently, much shorter, and she appeared to be—what
? Tired. Uneasy. Yeah, a little of both. She also looked as though she might be recuperating from something, a virus maybe.

  “Have you been sick?” he asked, before remembering he was trying to question a recording.

  “ ... want you to know I’m fine,” Kate was saying.

  She sat in a wingback white rattan chair out in a walled redstone and adobe patio. There was sunlight and a lot of bright foliage and flowers surrounding her. The tape had apparently been made this afternoon.

  “Dan is doing very well. He was accepted by a very fine prep school down here and he’s getting good grades in his major subjects.”

  “What are they?” Jake didn’t even know what his son was studying, what he wanted to be. Dan had always said he was going to be a cop. But that was four years ago, when he was eleven, and before Jake had been sent up to the Freezer.

  “ ... best that right now we don’t see you. We both, as you must know, wish you only the best in life, Jake. And perhaps sometime in the future we’ll all be able to get together.” Kate paused, glancing down at her folded hands. “I’m not saying this to hurt you—please understand that—but Danny was terribly upset by what happened. He’d admired you so much and then—well, it took a long time for him to get over that, to accept the fact his father was in prison. Seeing you just now, I’m afraid, would only—”

  “I was innocent!” shouted Jake at the screen. “You know that, Kate—so does Dan.”

  “ ... if you’d remained up in the Freezer for the full fifteen years, it might be different. But four years, Jake, simply hasn’t been long enough for Danny to adjust to all that’s happened.”

  “If I stayed the whole sentence, he’d be twenty-six when I got loose. Probably married and with kids of his own and only a vague idea of who the hell I was.”

  “ ... please keep in mind that I have no bad feelings toward you. I did, after all, love you once. I’m sure that now you’re free you’ll be able to build some sort of very satisfying life for yourself. But that life can’t have anything to do with Dan and myself. You’re a good man, Jake—good luck.”