Montezuma Strip (12 page)

They might as well go ahead and dump him, too, Wormy thought bitterly. The kid was too vit bungoed to last a month in juvie
hold. He’d go over the screen inside, never come out intact. He had been the nearest thing to a real friend Wormy had had,
and now he was gone, too.

There wasn’t much left to try to scavenge except maybe a little truth.

He found two of them, Carasco and Gray Leena, outside Compieradas’s Emporium. They were leaning against the wall, sharing
a sense stick and laughing and giggling. Wormy sidled out of the shadows, nervously watching the street for signs of federales.

“Hey, Carasco?”

The big Tesla turned, frowning. “Who asks?”

“Me. You know me, Carasco.” Wormy stepped farther into the streetlight.

“Hey, ain’t you the little freak who keeps following Anita around? Paco finds you, he’s gonna grease you good,
camarón.”

“Wait a minute, Cary.” Drogged by the sense stick, Gray Leena was trying to focus on the new arrival. “How come he ain’t in
jail?”

“Yeahhh.” Carasco seemed to remember something. “How come you ain’t in jail?”

“They let me go.” Wormy looked past them, eyes on the street. “I got to find Anita.”

Carasco laughed. He was a big kid, full of wildness and
the usual juvie sense of misplaced immortality. Nothing could hurt him; nothing could frighten him.

“Get gone. Waft.
Jojobar, camarón”

“I got to know. I got to ask her something.” As Carasco started to turn away, Wormy made a desperate grab for his shirt.

Carasco reached around to swat him with the back of his hand, disdaining the effort required to form his fingers into a fist.
Wormy went staggering back, stung. The bigger boy’s expression went mean.

“You touch me again,
camarón,
and there won’t be nothing left for Paco to grind.”

Wormy’s lips tightened. He extracted his transmitter. “Tell me where she is. Tell me now.”

Carasco squinted at the device. “Or what? You gonna grease me with your box?” He took a step forward, reaching out with a
massive hand. “About time somebody got rid of that piece of junk.”

Wormy retreated, holding the transmitter in front of his chest like a shield. “Don’t, Carasco. I don’ want to hurt you.”

The big Tesla laughed and continued to advance.

Wormy touched a contact. Carasco suddenly whipped around almost in midair, as if he’d been hit by a heavy-caliber slug, to
land screaming on his back holding the sides of his head. Beyond, a couple of patrons about to enter the Emporium had stopped
and were staring in the direction of the noise.

“Jesus!” Gray Leena bent over her neg, who was kicking and crying like an infant. She stared fearfully up at Wormy G. “What’d
you do to him?”

“He was gonna hurt me. Where’s Anita?”

“Try the Tiburon pier. She said somethin’ about spendin’ the
noche
out there with Paco.” She touched her whimpering boyfriend, drew her fingers back as though his skin had suddenly acquired
toxic properties. “What did you
do
to him?”

Wormy spun and ran into the night, leaving behind the lights of the Emporium, the street sounds, and the whine of an approaching
siren.

Tiburon pier extended triple fingers out across a shallow portion of the Gulf. It was a mixing place, old and seedy but full
of life and lights, a grand spot to stroll away a hot summer night. Rich administrators and cleanies, assemblers and maskers
mixed freely on the pier with ninlocos on good behavior, poor truck farmers from inland, recycle monkeys and spacebasers.
On the pier, nobody cared who or what you were. Darkness and damp dissolved away daytime discrimination. All that mattered
was the soothing sound of the Golfo Californio slapping against the pilings beneath your feet, the noise and laughter and
smell of greasy seafood frying in dozens of tiny shops.

Wormy was glad of the crowd. While the pier had its own private security force, patrolling federales occasionally put in an
appearance.

It was busy tonight, active as it always was in the summer season. Plenty of
touristas
as well as locals out trying to beat some of the heat. Good pickings if one were inclined to a little petit larceny. But
not this evening. Not for him.

He found them almost by accident, as he was about to give up and start back from the tip of the southern finger. They were
standing to the left of the fishermen who methodically cast their lines over the sides of the pier more for the activity than
in hopes of catching anything. Farther out on the dark sea lay the ambulatory stars that marked the location of cruising ships,
pleasure craft, and shrimpers orbiting the brighter constellations of the desal plants.

Paco and Anita’s embrace rendered them oblivious to such sights. Their faces were pushed tightly against each other, lips
and tongues pressing, probing. Paco had his hand on the back of her glazed culottes, and she had both arms around him.

As always, the sight was almost too painful for Wormy to bear. Another time, another night, he would have fled in despair.
Tonight he could not.

He stepped out of the dark place where he’d been hiding, his voice tremulous. “Anita?”

They separated, startled. Up the pier the fishermen, intent on their lines and conversation, ignored the confrontation. Paco
seethed.

“What do you mean scaring us like that, you stinking little shit?” He straightened slightly, remembering. “How’d you get out
of jail?”

“Luck and accident.” Wormy was watching Anita, not her threatening neg. “I got to know what happened.”

Paco smirked at him. “You killed a Sangre. Congratulations,
camarón.
Now waft before I call the feds.”

“I didn’t kill nobody. You know that.” He was speaking to Anita, who regarded him the way she would something that had just
spilled dead and slimy from a fisherman’s pail.

“The feds think you did,” said Paco. “That’s good enough.”

For the first time since he’d found them, Wormy locked eyes with his tormentor. “Then you know I didn’t do it. You know I
don’t carry a knife. Who did it, Paco? Carasco? Ellioto? Sad Jerry?”

The big ninloco grinned at him. “Maybe me?”

“And you put the knife in my hand so the federales would find it.”

Paco just laughed and shook his head. “You poor
camarón.
Why don’t you just waft now? Maybe the feds don’ find you if you can make your way as far as Hermosillo.” He took a step
forward. “Go on, creep, waft!”

Wormy raised the transmitter.

“Don’t come near me, Paco.”

“I think that’s about enough.”

The three of them turned in the direction of the new voice. The short man with the mustache who was standing nearby was overdressed
for Peñasco’s climate, sweating in his long shirt and sandals and slacks. He looked sad and unhappy, like somebody’s grandfather
escaped from a pension home. Older than his years.

Wormy retreated and pointed the transmitter in his direction, trying to keep an eye on Paco at the same time. “You a fed?”

“Sí.
And you are not a murderer.”

Uncertain, Wormy lowered the transmitter a little. “How you know that, mister?”

The man stared back at him, his transplanted blue eyes unblinking. His gaze was almost hypnotic and it held Wormy still. He
searched the shadows behind the man, but there was no sign of other federales. It made no sense.

Then he understood. “You’re an Intuit, aren’t you?”

The man gestured diffidently. “I have been doing my job. Listening to what all of you have been saying, to the nuances and
shadings of your voices. I know you did not kill that other boy.” His voice tightened slightly. “You did hurt that man on
the desal rig, though, didn’t you? And the boy back in the city?”

“What are you talking about, homber?” Paco inquired, lost in the conversation, unhappy at being ignored.

“I didn’t mean to,” Wormy mumbled. “I didn’t mean to hurt nobody. But they were gonna put me off the platform, and I had to
do something, you
comprende?
I had to do something.”

“It’s going to be okay now. I promise you. I’ll speak up for you in court. Besides, I know who killed that other boy.” The
blue eyes regarded Paco sadly.

“Hey, fed: you crazy, homber. I don’t kill nobody. You can’ prove nothin’. I don’t care if you are a weird. I heard about
you guys. You hear things in other people’s voices, see things in their faces. That’s
toro mierde,
homber.” He was backing toward the railing that edged the pier.

“You put the knife in my hand,” Wormy said accusingly. “You did it, Paco. You!” He raised the transmitter.

Cardenas judged the distance. He was much faster than he looked, but the boy was still far enough away to swing the device
around and bring it to bear on him. Having lived six years in the kingdom of the blind, he was genuinely afraid of possible
deafness. The biosurges had given him back his
sight. He had no desire to go through that again at the expense of a different sense.

“You nasty little
camarón
shit! Leave him alone!” Anita stepped in front of her boyfriend. “I put the damn knife in your stinking stupid little hand,
who do you think?” She sneered down at him.” Always following me around, like a little dog. I got tired of trying to shoo
you away. Then that happened, and I saw a chance to get rid of you and help somebody I loved besides. What did you think I
would do?”

The younger boy stared uncomprehendingly at her. “You put…? But what about our secret? I thought you…?”

She laughed sharply. “What, those stupid little songs you kept sending through my glasses? You can’t even sing. I always told
Paco about them afterward. We had some good laughs.”

The kid’s voice was as dry as the Sierra San Pedro Martir, a sick, unhealthy rasp. “You told him? You told
him
my songs, our songs?”

“Shit, what you think,
camarón?
Why you think I didn’t have him take that toy away from you and throw it into the Golfo the first time you pull that? Because
you kept me laughing. Because you were so funny. But not so funny that I didn’t think you’d look better with the knife in
your fingers when the federales congealed.”

“Oh.” Wormy stood there, swaying a little, as if keeping time to an unheard tune. Then he touched a contact on the top of
the crazy, cobbled-together mass of components and wires and wafers he carried, and raised it. Too ignorant to know better,
the girl just stood there, as if her sheer beauty were shield enough. Her boyfriend shrank down behind her, trying to conceal
himself, trying to hide.

Cardenas moved, but he was too late. The boy’s thumb convulsed on a second contact.

As he reversed the transmitter and pointed it directly at his own skull.

It was as if a giant fist had struck him under the chin. His small body arched up and back, and he did a broken half
somersault, striking the ground hard, writhing and twitching like a worm on the end of a hook. Blood exploded from the sides
of his head.

Cardenas kicked the transmitter out of the boy’s fingers. As it went skittering across the plastic pavement, the twin LEDs
on its surface winked out. The febrile, feathery wiring at one end snapped, a couple of sparks flared, and a crack appeared
on the side of the case.

Breathing hard, Cardenas looked down at the skinny kid, whose twitching was already beginning to slow. He spoke without glancing
up. “Don’t move, please. You are both under arrest.”

Paco bolted toward the bright lights of the middle pier. Cardenas pressed a switch on the police box in his pocket. The ninloco
would not make it back to land.

The girl had better sense. She stood there, angry and upset, not glancing in the direction of the younger boy at all.

The parameds got there fast, but not fast enough.

“He’s gone.” The middle-aged woman looked up from the pathetic corpse. It was no longer bleeding from the ears. “I mean, his
body’s still alive, but that’s all.” She tapped the side of her head meaningfully. “He blew in his ears. There’s pulverized
bone all mixed in with the blood. I did a quickscan. The cochlea is gone on both sides, along with the ossicles, the utricle
and saccule, and some of the surrounding supporting bone. The force of it drove bone fragments into the brain and caused immediate
hemorrhaging. He’s a vegetable.”

When the lieutenant arrived, a tech was gingerly examining the transmitter, poking and prodding the damaged device. Finally
he picked it up and walked over to his superiors. There was plenty of disbelief in his voice as he spoke to Cardenas.

“That kid made this?”

“So we believe,” said the sergeant.

“You know how Muse glasses work? You watch the vit images in the lenses while the arms deliver the accompanying audio to the
eardrum by direct transduction. The power is kept way down so that nobody can overhear and you don’t
disturb others when you use the glasses in a public place.” He tapped the transmitter.

“This son of a bitch is a tunable
broadcast
transducer. It works just like glasses, except no physical contact is necessary. It’s also overpowered by a factor of a hundred
or so. No wonder he blew his brains. His ears must have imploded. I don’t know how the hell he worked out the necessary logs
or frequencies, but me and the guys back at the lab are sure as hell gonna find out. He made it out of junk, too. Scrap I
wouldn’t give twenty bucks for.” The tech looked down at the body.

“Poor scared little
niño
was a freakin’ genius. Hey, I’ve rigged it with a speaker wafer. Want to hear what he killed himself with?”

Cardenas said nothing, but the lieutenant nodded. The tech held up a DiData control nodule he’d attached to the damaged transmitter
with an optical pass cord.

A female voice emerged from the tiny wafer grid that had been hastily glued to the top of the transmitter. It was cracked
and disjointed, but audible. Someone had set it to crude synthesized music.

“I love you so much, baby… oh, do that to me, please… I can’t hold you tight enough… squeeze me harder, lover… melt into me….”