Montezuma Strip (18 page)

Cardenas felt a need to try to direct the conversation. “It’s the suit,” he informed Okolona. “It conveys her movements to
the controller units and the animals mimic her gestures.”

Okolona shook her head. “That’s impossible. The controller sequences are all heavily encoded. Two Cribms working in tandem
couldn’t crack them.” Her gaze shifted back to the girl. “You couldn’t.”

“I didn’t have to.” Gagrito grinned. “Somebody gave them to me.”

Some of the color left Okolona’s face. “Only half a dozen people have access to the encoding sequence, and you wouldn’t have
anything they’d want badly enough to trade for it.”

“He did.” With great delight the girl pointed to the man sitting on the far end of the couch.

Okolona gaped at him, then slumped slightly. “It’s true, isn’t it? She’s telling the truth.
Why!”

“Because I gave him what he wanted,” the girl declared triumphantly when Ramon declined to respond. “I gave him
everything
he wanted. Did you think he was so fine, so pure? Isn’t the fact that he was interested in you proof enough to the contrary?
You’re old. Well preserved, as well preserved as money can preserve, but under all the attitudes and work and experience you’re
old.
Too old to satisfy him all the time. I’m not, and your boyfriend, well, while he made it clear that you were his main foodline,
he wasn’t averse to availing himself of a little willing young stuff on the side.”

For the first time Okolona’s composure was shaken. “You gave her the coding sequence for the controllers?”

“I didn’t think it would do any harm.” Ramon was on the verge of babbling. “She obviously wasn’t an industrial spy. She said
she just wanted it for herself, to fool around with, that it would help her with her hobby. She showed me the suit, told me
what it was for, what she was trying to do with it. She said the coding sequence would help with some algorithms, whatever
those are. I didn’t see the harm….”

“You didn’t see… ?” Okolona lowered her voice. “You didn’t see. Of course you didn’t.”

“Isn’t that what you always told me?” Gagrito paced the floor like some gangly, predatory bird. “That to get what you wanted,
to achieve your goals, you had to do whatever was necessary, give up whatever was required?”

“I never meant…”

“Just like you never meant to kill Squirt.” The trembling in the girl’s voice belied something deep, Cardenas sensed. Very
deep.

“You two know each other,” he said flatly. It more than explained how she’d been able to gain entrance to the mansion.

The girl whirled on him, her expression a maelstrom of fury and revulsion. “She’s my goddamn mother, frion. I had a cat once,
a long time ago. A long, long time ago. A cat and a father. She killed them both.”

Okolona’s voice rose, shaky but still vibrant. “Your father died of a heart condition!”

“Which you aggravated; pushing him, driving him, always reaching, always striving, always. You didn’t just help him into an
early grave; you shoved him in.”

“He wanted success as much as I did! He wanted Neurologic!”

“You
wanted Neurologic,” the girl snarled. “Daddy wanted food, and a roof over our heads, and maybe, eventually, some recognition
for all his years of slaving. But that wasn’t good enough for you. You had to be on top. You had to be bitch queen of neuronics,
a duchess of the Strip. So you kept pushing him, and pushing him, and finally he just gave up and died. It was a way out.

“And Squirt. Why’d you have to take my cat?” She was crying now, crying and accusing all at once. “Why couldn’t you have found
some other animal to try your damn rotten stinking controller on?”

“That was an accident. I’ve explained it to you over and over. An accident. It should have worked perfectly. It had been tested
repeatedly. I thought you’d like Squirt better after it was done, thought you’d be pleased and surprised with what she could
do. The only cat in the world who could do such things. The only one.”

“I just wanted a cat!” Gagrito screamed. “My cat! Squirt. An ordinary, smelly, warm, furry cat. Not something that could do
highwire tricks and navigate the fucking car. Just a cat. And you killed that. Squirt wasn’t good enough for you the way she
was. You had to try and improve her. Like you had to try and improve everything and everybody else.”

“I did it for you,” Okolona insisted. “It didn’t work out, it was a tragedy, that cat, but I did it for you.”

“Mierde,
you never did anything for anybody in your life except yourself. You were always improving things. Nothing was ever good
enough.” She grinned nastily then, and her expression bore more than a little in common with the dead jaguar’s. “I learned
a lot from you. I studied real hard. I
designed this suit, and Twotrick helped a great deal. They threw him out of medical school, and we found each other, and he
helped. I can make improvements, too!”

Cardenas tensed as she touched a switch on her sleeve. But no animals leaped into the room, no big cats, no large fanged dogs,
no poisonous snakes or hulking bears.

On the far end of the couch, Ramon twitched. His eyes became small moons. Gagrito raised her right hand, clenched the fingers
into a fist. Ramon mimicked the gesture, gazing in horror at his own, out-of-control extremities. He gaped at her. “What…
Nilaa… what?”

“When you were asleep.” Her tone would have iced lava. “Twotrick rented a place, equipment, assistants. He did it. I drugged
you, you woke up and never realized. He did it.” She pirouetted and he rose from the couch and duplicated the movement with
fluid masculine grace.

“The stim wires. You’re full of ‘em. They’re all in your legs and your arms. In your hands and your feet. It wasn’t hard.
The system works just as well on people as on animals. The controller’s in your back, up high where you can’t feel it. No
voicebox, though. We didn’t give you a second voicebox. You’re such a smooth talker on your own.”

“But
why,
Nilaa! Why?”

“Because you were with her.” The girl gestured at the paralyzed Okolona. “Because I was only an amusement for you, a diversion,
a compliant perversion you could wallow in whenever you felt the urge. Because I knew she’d marry you eventually and I couldn’t
really see myself calling you daddy, now could I? But mostly because she wanted you, she liked you. So I thought I’d help,
to her way of thinking, by improving you. God knows you could stand some improvement. Just as she improved poor little Squirt.”
Eyes blazing, she stared at the suddenly broken woman slumped on the couch.

“How about it, Mother dear? How do you like your new and improved fiancé? Isn’t he elegant? Isn’t he graceful?” She twisted
and bent, jumped and kicked. An expression of
ineffable horror on his face, Ramon mimicked every one of her movements as earnestly as his older, male body could.

Entranced, perfectly focused, she drew her knife and tossed it to him, clutching with her hand, making him grab it. He gawked
at the blade in horror, wanting to let go, to drop it, to throw it aside, but unable to command his fingers, unable to let
loose. She turned toward the couch.

Okolona started to edge to her right, trying to divide her attention between Ramon and her daughter. “This won’t bring your
father back, it won’t bring back your cat, and it won’t slow production at Neurologic.”

“No, no,” agreed Gagrito in a tone turned unexpectedly gentle, mesmerized by her own audacity, “but maybe, just maybe, it’ll
let me sleep without any more nightmares, without too much thinking. Maybe it’ll put an end to some of the remembering.” As
she approached the couch so did Ramon, struggling with his own legs.

“Nilaa, I’m your
mother”

The girl halted. Behind him Cardenas heard Gluey giggling, “Go on, do it, do it, Gagrito!”

“No.” She retreated. So did Ramon. “No, she’s right. I’ve hated her for so long I can’t hate anymore. All I can do is finish
it. Somehow. Endgame.”

“No!” Cardenas took a step forward. Eager Gluey jammed the pistol into the small of his back.

The girl made a sweeping motion. Casual, relaxed, as if she were dancing in her sleep. Okolona screamed.

Emitting a terrified croak, Ramon simultaneously brought his hand up and around and in flawless imitation of the girl’s gesture
neatly cut his own throat.

“Ramon!”
Okolona abandoned the couch and ran toward her lover, who, shaking violently, collapsed to the floor. Silently the girl wrapped
her arms around herself. In imitation the flopping Ramon drew Okolona to him, blood spurting from his throat, splashing her
in the face, the neck, the chest. Gluey and Twotrick looked on raptly, utterly captivated. The boy giggled uncontrollably,
tracing slow circles against Cardenas’s
spine with the muzzle of the gun. He intuited something in the boy’s laugh; a moment of distraction, an instant of indifference,
preoccupation with the gruesome scene being played out before them.

He was small and old. And deceptive.

Spinning with unexpected speed, he chopped down on the boy’s wrist and sent the gun flying. It hit the tiles and slid under
the second couch. Twotrick rushed forward, blade at the ready, but Cardenas was ready for him. He blocked the half-wild, undisciplined
blow and kicked out straight, crunching the boy’s knee. Twotrick howled and went down, dropping the stiletto.

Gagrito whirled and pantomimed an advance. Shoving the hysterical Okolona off his chest a vacant-eyed Ramon rose and staggered
toward the sergeant, blood pumping from the slash in his throat, the dripping knife held high.

Retreating, Cardenas fumbled in a pocket until his fingers locked around the spare power cell he carried for his vorec. Activating
it with a flick of his thumbnail, he threw it at the girl. It struck her in the stomach.

There was a brief, brilliant flash, bright as a mystic visitation, and she screamed as the stim wires woven into the suit
conducted the open charge, shorting out the entire system, feeding back to her muscles. She fell, collapsing, twitching uncontrollably
as the system went crazy, throwing her own muscles into mad spasms. Freed of her influence Ramon folded, clutching at his
throat.

Cardenas scrambled to recover his pistol from beneath the couch. By the time he sat up Gluey was already gone, fled through
the double doors. Twotrick lay on his side on the floor, clutching his shattered knee and bawling like a betrayed virgin.
Gradually the girl went immobile. A few wisps of thin, acrid smoke rose from her body. He couldn’t tell if she was dead.

He tore off his shirt and jammed it into the hole in Ramon’s neck while Okolona cradled the head of her lover in her lap,
rocking back and forth and wailing softly.

“Call for help,” he ordered her. “Ambulance first, then police. Do it!” he shouted when she didn’t react.

Her eyes came up to gaze dumbly into his. For a long moment the madness and the sorrow held sway. Then it receded as a fragment
of the iron will that had built Neurologic reasserted itself. She rose and stumbled toward a phone.

Cardenas stayed there, holding the rag tight against Ramon’s throat. Later, much later, he was told that the parameds had
somehow managed to save him. The sergeant was neither pleased nor disappointed. By the letter of the law the man was guilty
of nothing but bad judgment and being a lousy human being.

The girl was in a coma. Cataleptic shock, the biosurges said. As much self-induced as the result of feedback from her damaged
suit.

Cardenas methodically filled out his report. It took a long time and he had to stop several times, leaving and then returning
to the extensive, impersonal form. When he’d finished he inquired one more time about Nilaa Okolona before starting back to
Nogales. He didn’t ask about the mother.

No change, they told him. Vital signs steady, nervous system unresponsive. Did he wish to be kept apprised of her condition?

He did not. Experience had taught him that it’s not good for a frion, a cop, to become too involved in his work, to get too
close to people.

Especially to a ninloco girl who would choose to nickname herself the screaming kitten.

So you see, some things you can’t buy. I don’t care what the new merchants say, there’s no such thing as virtual love. Or
maybe it’s all virtual. That definition thing, again.

I’ve loved, and I didn’t think there was anything virtual about it. Love’s as ethereal as the heat in Sonora and as substantial
as the sauce at the
Casa de Mole.
For those of you who don’t know, that’s mole as in “moh-lay” the chocolate sauce, not as in the subterranean rodent. Though
I suppose you could serve mole
mole.
You might; I wouldn’t.

The Strip not only manufactures, it sells. Anything you want,
homber.
That in addition to all the stuff you don’t want. Remember what I said about advertising; just don’t spread it around. It’s
considered unpatriotic, and I’m looking forward to an uncontroversial retirement.

Want a slave? Oh, I know slavery’s officially banned, but when was the last time you read the fine print on the contract for
the last big appliance you bought? I mean the
really
fine print? That’s what I thought. If you can indenture a machine, you can indenture a person. Usually it’s voluntary. A
good slave can make a lot of money. And in these days of rampant overpopulation they’re not all that expensive. It’s the liability
insurance that puts most people off.

Didn’t used to be that way. Funny how morality changes with time. I find myself upholding laws that didn’t exist fifty, a
hundred years ago. Sometimes only the details seem to change. The fine print.

Yeah, you can sell anything on the Strip. But that doesn’t mean it’s always legal to buy it.

H
EY, don’ give me no silly smile like that, man. You want to hear the
verdad
story, I’m giving you the
verdad
story. Why would I make something like that up? I ain’t that smart. Besides, no way could I make up something worse than
what really happened.