Montezuma Strip (25 page)

“Have a seat, padre.” The owner gestured at an empty chair. “What can I do for you?” His tone was soft and inoffensive, the
kind of voice that made you feel instantly at ease. His attitude was friendly and accommodating. The salesbitch had him all
wrong. Maybe this one would go easy, the visitor mused as he sat.

“Señor Cardenas, I represent a local religious Order which has devoted itself to serving the poor of the Strip. To those in
need we provide food, shelter, medicines, and sometimes a modicum of necessary funds. Since we are not a nationally recognized
institution we are forced to survive on the charity of local merchants. Yours is a new establishment in our parish and you
seem to be doing well.”

“We are,” Cardenas informed him.

“Then perhaps you might see your way to contributing on a regular basis to our good works.”

The owner looked thoughtful. “Let me tell you something, padre. When I was very young my mother died. I prayed to God to let
her live. She did, for months, in great pain from cancer. Only then did her suffering end. My father was killed
by a spazzed ninloco on parole from San Luis. It is my feeling that I have no use for your church or any other. So I will
not contribute to your Order. You may leave now.”

“Please, Señor Cardenas. I ask you to reconsider. For the poor.”

Ice-blue eyes blazed unexpectedly. “You have ten seconds to get out before Fennel renders you unable to collect from anybody,
much less me.”

The violence of the owner’s retort caught the visitor off-guard. Not that he was long troubled. He rose to depart.

“Our Lady is not pleased by those who speak so indifferently of those in need. I sympathize with your history…”

“Don’t,” said Cardenas sharply. “Just get out, and stay out.”

“God can persuade as well as heal,” the visitor declared as he moved toward the thick door. “Though you have not been long
among us it may be that you have heard of others in this part of the Strip who have had doubts of a similar nature resolved.”

“I haven’t been here long enough to hear much of anything except multo
gracias
from my suppliers, and I never listen to street gossip.
Hasta
your lego, padre. Better luck elsewhere.” The door shut firmly behind the visitor.

He nodded at the glowering guard outside and strode briskly toward the exit. Clearly this Cardenas was one of those who could
not be recruited by mere supplication. But if he were to meet with a fatal condition a venture like the weapons shop might
easily fail. That would not be in the best interests of the Order. Dead men made poor contributors.

The gun monger had struck the visitor as a very straightforward type. Skeptical to be sure, but once convinced, forever amenable.
The visitor smiled. He and his Brothers would pray over this.

Behind him, the guard and the saleswoman caucused with Cardenas.

“If he’s a real priest, then I’m a pedigreed poodle pamperer,” the woman announced. “He was mouthing all the
right words, but his eyes were on my chest half the time and it wasn’t benediction he had in mind. You could see it in his
eyes. Hell, you could practically smell it.” Her mouth wrinkled at the remembrance.

“Thanks, Darcy,” Cardenas told her. “He’s obviously had practice. His performance was good, but not perfect. His origins kept
showing.” He glanced to his left. “Any thoughts, Corporal Fennel?”

“Sergeant Delacroix’s right. It’s a scam from the
venga,
sir. I’d bet my pension the poor pavers in this part of the Strip don’t see a single credit from this guy’s ‘Order’. The
recorders made a good snatch. If his reality’s in the active files we should have something on him by tomorrow; a little longer
if he’s not.”

Cardenas nodded knowingly. “Before he left he as much as threatened me with the same kind of fatal visitation that expiated
that music-store exec last month.”

“Anything we can wind him on, sir?” the big man asked.

“No. He’s too clever for that. Everything was implied. But the threat was real enough. I’m never wrong about such things.”
The officer didn’t dispute this. Everyone knew Cardenas’s reputation.

The sergeant looked grim. “All the tech’s in place, Inspector. If anything weird manifests we’ll be ready for it.”

“We’d better be,” said Cardenas. “The hook’s been set. I don’t want any casualties on this operation.”

“Orthodox, sir.” She turned and departed. The chevroned steroid went with her, hesitating at the door only after he was sure
that his fellow officer was out of hearing range.

“Inspector?”

Cardenas eyed the officer. “What is it, Lukas?”

“Well, sir, it’s just that… my family’s Catholic, sir, and I was wondering if maybe…” He broke off, looking like a man who’d
lost a contact lens instead of the right words.

“Wondering what, Lukas?”

The big man gazed back down at him. “This really couldn’t be a manifestation of the Madonna, could it, sir? I mean, I’ve
read the reports and the descriptions testified to by those who’ve seen it, especially the night manager at the musik store….”

“Lukas, do you really think the Madonna would stoop to soliciting donations on behalf of false priests?”

“No, sir, of course not, sir, but the musik exec had a scramble screen
and
a disruptor, and they didn’t save him. They didn’t work at all. Any kind of holomage, even a tactile, should drop before
either of those kinds of defenses, much less both.”

“Officer Fennel, are you sure you’re going to be able to carry out your duties on this assignment?”

The corporal stiffened. “Yes, sir.”

“Then go back to your station and stop thinking so much.”

The big man nodded and left, but it was clear he was still troubled. He might fool his colleagues into believing everything
was okay with him, but not an Intuit.

It was pretty bad, Cardenas thought, when your own people started giving credence to the utterly outrageous. That was the
reality of modern supratech for you. Virtually convincing. The idea that a Madonna was at work in the extortion business was
as patently absurd as the notion of one appearing in an Ajo farmer’s pecan orchard, an actual incident that had been related
on the vit not all that many weeks ago.

This part of the world had been reporting such manifestations for centuries. Madonnas were seen in twisted tree limbs or in
shadows cast on walls, or in the reflections of badly installed bathroom mirrors. There were Madonna sightings several times
a year, usually by rural folk for whom the scientific method and common techniques of simple analysis remained as unfathomable
and mysterious as the inner workings of a modern vehicle. When resigned specialists arrived on each scene to propitiate the
inevitable outpouring of misplaced fervor, a natural explanation for each event was always quickly found.

This one was more sophisticated than most and would take a little more effort to explain. The only caveat awaiting its
explicators was that it was also a lot more deadly than a perceived silhouette on a wall or a benignly misshapen pumpkin.

They didn’t have a chance to see what the active files held on their insistent padre because the apparition manifested itself
before the requested report could be delivered. For a sanctimonious visitation, Cardenas thought, it was remarkably responsive
to the complaints of its chosen supplicants.

He recovered quickly from the initial surprise when it coalesced in his sealed and supposedly screened office. That it could
bypass conventional security measures they knew from the way it had actively penetrated the defenses maintained by the recently
deceased founder of the budding Musik-Niche music boutique chain. As to its appearance, it was exactly as described by surviving
eyewitnesses such as the music store’s night manager and the shop owner’s widow.

It was quite a show, he decided. Traditional yet stirring, more than substantial enough to convince the gullible. And if the
reports were to be believed, capable of unique feats of physical manipulation. That was what really intrigued him. In his
career he’d had a pair of unprecedented encounters with tactile projections: more-than-virtual electronic matrixes capable
of interfacing with solid objects, including people. He had to admit that the lifesize, softly glowing woman in her simulated
white robes was as impressive as anything he’d previously experienced.

“You’re very well made.” His finger nudged the switch mounted beneath the arm of the chair. No one knew how the specter had
managed to kill several perfectly healthy men, but no matter what transpired it would not add Cardenas to its list. A touch
of the switch would instantly lower the chair in which he reposed to the basement below.

“You mock me.” The voice was perfectly attuned to the
figure, but voices were easy to synthesize and mate to a holomage. Active corporeal tactility was an infinitely more ambitious
achievement.

“Not at all. It was a compliment.”

“You do not believe in me,” the hovering Virgo declared.

“I’m willing to be convinced.” This was true, as far as it went.

The phantasm turned toward the blank wall that faced the main part of the store. “You deal in violence.”

“Does that trouble you?” Cardenas’s finger lightly massaged the safety switch.

“Of course it does.”

“But you’d still accept money from me that’s derived from the sale of weapons.”

From beneath brows of graven ivory limpid eyes fraught with imponderables deliberated. “Not I. Those who serve me. For the
sake of the poor and needy, yes, I would not turn away such a tithing. Until the time comes for violence to be banished from
this world I will take from the misguided to help the needy. There has after all been violence even in Heaven, when Michael
and the Host cast out Satan and his followers.”

“I don’t deal in anything that extreme. You have to understand, of course, that I would need some kind of proof of your divine
character before I’d simply turn over the fruits of my labor to those who claim to serve in your name.”

The enraptured incarnation did not hesitate. “Come then, and you will have your proof. He who hesitates is lost.”

I don’t remember that quotation as being from the Bible he thought, but said nothing aloud.

A luminous white hand reached for him and he flinched. While no threat had been voiced or implied, there was no way he could
intuit a projection. Reason suggested he would not be harmed; at least, not this time. He’d expressed a willingness to be
converted, and a live believer constituted a much more profitable mark than a dead skeptic.

Reaching a decision he rose from the chair, eschewing the
safety it represented, and extended his own hand. The supple snowy fingers enveloped his own. He felt a gentle pressure urging
him toward the doorway. The finger pressure was startlingly real, appropriately ethereal, and not the product of some clever
subliminal projection. For the first time he felt his skeptical convictions wavering slightly.

But then, a highly advanced tactile program should be capable of that much. So gentle was the grip he felt certain he could
pull away at any time. He did not try to do so for fear the action might provoke a less amiable portion of the program. He
allowed himself to be led.

Fennel started when the phantasm emerged with the inspector in tow, but at a sign from Cardenas he stayed clear and kept his
hands away from his weapons. As man and manifestation stepped out onto the shop floor, murmurs of confusion and then recognition
arose from previously preoccupied customers. There was a concerted, agitated rush for the exit that the salespeople, federales
all, made no effort to impede.

One officer feigned panic and joined the customers in breaking for the egress. Cardenas complimented him mentally for his
quick thinking. Depending on the sophistication of the Madonna’s observation and analysis programming, internal alarms might
have been triggered if all the customers had fled while every member of the store’s staff stood pat. The officer’s precipitous
flight should reassure the program along with whoever was monitoring it.

The apparition drifted over to a glass case to examine the weaponry within. “So much intricate death. Yet it is not at this
moment in time within my purview to ban or interfere. Only to succor the poor.” Releasing Cardenas from her feathery grasp
the figure reached out. The plainclothes unsaleswoman behind the case decided it was time to move and edged away.

Radiant fingertips touched the glass and melted a hole through the thick transparency. They dipped lower to nudge the arm-and-activate
switch on the shaft of a Rugersturm .10 caliber repeating pistol lying on the top shelf. There were
gasps and a couple of muted curses as everyone, Cardenas included, dove for cover.

The weapon wailed. Sixty tiny shells splintered the case and tore into the wall, other display cases, and the floor as the
ignited but unguided weapon flushed its oval clip in a thirty-second staccato orgasm of destruction.

As the echoes faded Cardenas looked up and slowly slid his hands off the back of his head. Everyone stayed prone, waiting
for whatever might come next. The beatific shade pivoted to fix him with a kind but reproving eye.

“So much violence.” It drifted toward another display near the back. Two officers garbed as salesclerks scrambled in opposite
directions as the figure melted another hole and triggered a demonstration sinus grenade. As irritating gas spread through
the salesroom, personnel scattered, clutching at their faces and sneezing uncontrollably while mucus poured from their nostrils.
Cardenas rose to join them in the rush for the street but a lambent feminine figure interposed itself between him and the
exit.

“Do not be alarmed. You will not be affected. I have spread my circle around you.” And indeed, the initial tickle of the gas
was not repeated. All around him his tactical team was staggering for the doorway while he stood alone and unaffected in their
midst.

A very impressive demonstration, he decided, but not unarguably divine in origin.