Montezuma Strip (6 page)

“I don’t think so. If that was their intent they could have
done it by entrepreneuring. Easier and cheaper.” He leaned back in the chair and ran a hand down Charliebo’s neck. “Besides,
it doesn’t fit their profiles. Crescent was pure company man, GenDyne do or die. Noschek was too unstable to survive outside
the corporate womb.”

“Then why?”

“I thought they might’ve been doing some work for somebody else but there’s no indication of that anywhere. They did a hell
of a job of hiding what they were up to, but no way could they hide all that crunch. You know what I think?” He gave Charliebo
a pat and swiveled around to face her. “I think there’s a box in here that doesn’t belong to GenDyne.”

“And Noschek?”

“Maybe there’s one in Parabas, too. Or maybe the same box floating between both locations. With that much crunch you could
do just about anything.
Quien sabe
what they were into?”

“So you’re thinking maybe whoever they were working for vacuumed them for the crunch?”

“Not the crunch, no. Whatever our boys were using it for. Haven’t got a clue to that yet.” He found himself rubbing his eyes
again.

She rose and walked over to stand behind his chair. Her hands dug into his shoulders, kneading, releasing the accumulated
tension. “Let’s get out of here for a while. You’re spending too much time sponging. You try doing that and playing the analytical
cop simultaneously, you’re going to turn your brain to mush.”

He hardly heard her. “I’ve got to figure the why before we can figure the how.”

“Later. No more figuring for today.” She leaned forward. He was enveloped by the folds of her jumpsuit and the heavy, warm
curves it enclosed. “Even a sponge needs to rest.”

It came to him when he wasn’t thinking about it, which is often the path taken by revelation. He was lying prone on the oversized
hybred, feeling the preprogrammed wave motion
stroking his back like extruded lanolin. Hypatia lay nearby, her body pale arcs and valleys like sand dunes lit by moonlight.
The ceaseless murmur of the Strip seeped through the down-polarized windows, a susurration speaking of people and electronics,
industry and brief flaring sparks of pleasure.

He ran a hand along her side, starting at her shoulder and accelerating down her ribs, slowing as it ascended the curve of
her hip. Her skin was cool, unwrinkled. Her mind wasn’t the only thing that had been well taken care of. She rolled over to
face him. Next to the bed Charliebo stirred in his sleep, chasing ghost rabbits that stayed always just ahead of his teeth.

“What is it?” She blinked sleepily at him, then made a face. “God, don’t you
ever
sleep? I thought I wore you out enough for that, anyways.”

He smiled absently. “You did. I just woke up. Funny. You spend all your waking hours working a problem and all you get for
your efforts is garbage. Then when you’re not concentrating on it—there it is. Set out like cake at a wedding. I just sorted
it out.”

She sat up on the hybred. Not all the lingering motion was in the mattress. He luxuriated in the sight of her.

“Sorted what out?”

“What Crescent and Noschek were doing together. It wasn’t in the boxes and it wasn’t in their files. No wonder corporate Security
couldn’t find anything. They never would have. The answer wasn’t in their work. It was in them. In their voices, their attitudes,
what they had in common and what they didn’t. In what they didn’t commit to storage. They shared their work but they kept
themselves to themselves.”

“A cop shouldn’t be full of riddles.”

“Have you got a terminal here?”

“Does a cow have udders?” She slid off the bed, jounced across the room, and touched a switch. A portion of wall slid upward
to reveal a small screen while the vorec popped out of a slot nearby, an obedient metal eel. He walked over and
plucked it from its holder, studied the screen. They were both naked, both comfortable with it and each other.

“Pretty fancy setup for a household.”

“Think. I have to work at home sometimes. I need more than a toy.” She leaned against him.

“Look, let me concentrate for a minute, will you?”

She straightened. He saw her teeth flash in the dim light. “Okay. But only for a minute.”

He activated the screen, filled the vorec mike with a steady stream of instructions. It was slower than the Designer units
he’d sponged at Parabas and GenDyne but far faster than any normal home unit. Soon he was running the files he needed from
both companies. Then he surprised Hypatia by accessing Nogales. The problem he set up was for the Sociopsycultural Department
at the U of A. It didn’t take the University Box long to render its determination.

“There it is.”

She stared at the screen, then back at him. “There
what
is?”

“Answers, maybe.” He slipped the vorec back into its slot. The screen went dark. “Let’s ambulate.”

“What, now?” She ran fingers through her unkempt hair. “Don’t you ever give a lady a chance to catch up?”

“You can catch up next week, next month.” He’d found his pants and was stepping into them. “I think I know what happened.
Most of it, anyway. The data make sense. It’s what our two boys did that doesn’t make sense, but I think they went and did
it anyway.”

She thumbed a closet open and began rummaging through her clothes. “You mean you know who vacuumed them?”

He fastened the velcrite of his waistband. The blue federales bracelet bounced on his wrist. “Nobody vacuumed them. They vacuumed
themselves.”

She paused with the velcrite catch of her bra. “Another riddle? I’m getting tired of your riddles, Angel.”

“No riddle. They vacuumed themselves. Simultaneously,
via program. I think it was a double suicide. And by the way, I’m no Angel. It’s ‘Ahn-hell,’ for crissakes.”

“That’s Tex-Mex. I only speak anglo.”

“Screw you.”

She struck a pose. “I thought you were in a hurry to leave?”

Security let them back into GenDyne but they weren’t happy about it. There was something wrong about cops going to work at
three
A.M
. The guard in the hall took his time. His helmet flared as the scanner roved over both nocturnal visitors. Just doing his
job. Eventually he signed them through.

They went straight to Crescent’s office. It was the same as they’d left it, nothing moved, unexpectedly sterile-looking under
the concealed incandescents. Cardenas found his gaze returning unwillingly to the bright family portraits that hovered above
the desk.

He flicked the vorec and brought the wallscreen online. He warmed up with some simple mnemonics before getting serious with
the tactical verbals he’d decided to use. Hypatia caught her breath as the wall flared, but no psychomorph coalesced to threaten
them. Cardenas was being careful, additionally so with Hypatia in the room. Charliebo cocked his head sideways as he stared
at the screen.

Five minutes later Cardenas had the answer to the first of his questions.

“It’s tactile. Same kind of concealed setup Noschek had in his place.”

“Jesus! You could warn a body.”

“There’s no danger. I’m not sponging deep yet. All surface. There are ways. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to trigger anything.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

He drove in, the words flowing in a steady stream into the vorec as he keyed different levels within the main GenDyne box.
This time he went in fast and easy. He went wherever he wanted to without any problem—and that was the problem.
After what seemed like fifteen minutes he paused to check his bracelet. Two hours gone. Soon it would be light outside.

Hypatia had settled herself on the edge of the desk. She was watching him intently. “Anything?”

“Not what I came for. Plenty Parabas would pay to get their hands on. I’m sure the reverse would be true if I was sponging
their box like this.” He shook his head as he regarded the screen. “There’s got to be another box in there, somewhere. Or
a section that’s reading out dead.”

“Impossible. You need full cryo to keep the box wet and accessible. You can’t just set something like that up in the middle
of an outfit like GenDyne without tripping half a dozen alarms.”

“Alarms are usually set to warn of withdrawal, not entry.”

“Any kind of solid insertion like that would have people asking questions.”

“You can avoid questions if you can avoid notice. These guys were wizards at avoiding notice.”

She crossed her arms. “I still say it’s impossible.”

He turned back to the wall. “We’ll see.”

He found it only because he had some idea what he was looking for. No one else would have glanced at it. There was no separate
box. Hypatia was right about that. Instead it was buried deep within the basic GenDyne box itself, disguised as a dormant
file for a biolight conveyor. When he sponged it Hypatia caught her breath.

“My God. A subox tunnel.”

“I’ve heard about them,” Cardenas murmured tightly, “but I’ve never actually seen one before.”

“That’s as close to being invisible as you can get and still be inside a box.” She was standing close to the wall now, examining
the holo intensely. “Whoever engineered this was half Designer and half magician.”

Cardenas found himself nodding. “That’s our boys.” He studied the slowly rotating cylindrical schematic. “The key question
is, where does it go?” He was set to start in when
Hypatia stopped him, walking over to put a hand on his arm and block his view of the screen.

“Maybe we better get some help. This is way over my head.”

“And therefore mine, too?” He smiled. “You don’t have to know how to build a plane to know how to fly one. I can handle it.”

“More psychomorphs? And who knows what else.”

“I’m ready for it this time. Hypatia, I can intuit
fast.
Anything starts coming out of that tube I’ll just dry out.”

“Man, I hope you know what you’re doing.” She stepped aside. Together they stared as he spoke into the vorec and started down
the tunnel.

They encountered no traps, no guards. Smart. Oh, so smart, he thought to himself. Make it look like an ordinary part of the
box. Make it look like it belongs. Normalcy was the best disguise.

They wouldn’t put him off the track with that. Because even though he didn’t understand the how yet, he knew the why.

Hypatia asked him about it again. “I still don’t get this double suicide business.”

“It’s what they were.” He spoke between commands to the vorec, waiting while the wall complied with each sequence of instructions.
He was tense but in control. It was one lonnnng tube.

“Noschek particularly. He was the key. You see, part of the tragedy was that they could never meet in person. Security would
have found out right away and that would have finished both of them. It meant they could only communicate through the joint
Fordmatsu link they established. Like in the old times when people sent information by personal messenger. It was too complex,
too involved, too
intense
for it to just be business. There had to be more to it than that. And then when I couldn’t find any business at all, that
clinched it.”

“Clinched what?”

“The fact that they had to be lovers. Via the Fordmatsu link. Crescent and Noschek were homosexual, Hypatia.”

She went dead quiet for several minutes before replying. “Oh, come on, Angel! Crescent had a family. Two kids.”

“He was latent. Probably all his life. That’s why I had to run double profiles together with what I suspected through the
Sociopsycultural box up at U of A. It confirmed. I’m sure if we had time to go over their lives in more detail we’d find plenty
of other clues.

“You told me Crescent was a trueglue GenDyne man. I’m sure he was. GenDyne’s about as liberal as its multinat counterparts.
Which is to say, not at all. Two Fundamentalists on its Board. Crescent knew if he strayed once it would put endo to his career.
So he stayed in the closet. Covered himself thoroughly for the sake of his future. I’ve no doubt he loved his wife. Meanwhile
everything proceeded the way he’d probably dreamed it might. Gradually his tendencies faded as he buried himself in his family
and work.

“Then Noschek came along, possibly through a casual social hookup. A brilliant, wild young talent. Pretty to boot. And they
got to know each other. Most relationships develop. This one exploded.”

“So they ‘related’ through box links?”

He nodded. “Try to imagine what they must have gone through. It’s all there in their voices, in the stuff I was able to sponge
from the months before they vacuumed. They knew they couldn’t meet. Crescent knew it would ruin him. I don’t know if that
bothered Noschek—he didn’t seem to give a damn for social conventions. But he cared about Crescent. So they built this Fordmatsu
link out of stolen crunch.”

“They wouldn’t need all that crunch just to maintain a private communication.”

“Exactly. So they started discussing their problem, fooling around with all that excess crunch they had access to. Meanwhile
their relationship just kept getting tighter and tighter at
the same time as they were becoming increasingly frustrated with their situation.

“Eventually they found something. Noschek was the innovator, Crescent the experienced constructor. They discovered a way to
be together. Always.”

“Through mutual suicide?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t bring people together. It doesn’t profile, either. Noschek sure,
but Crescent was too stable to go for that.”

“How stable do you think he would have been if his wife had ever found out? Or his kids? The only way to spare them the disgrace
was to make it look like a murder. That way our boys would be able to slip away untarnished and untroubled.”

“So they figured out a way to vacuum themselves? Papiermâiché wings and brass harps and the whole metaphysical ensemble?”

“No. They’re vacuumed, alright, but they’re not gone. They’re together, like they wanted to be. Together in a sense no one
else can understand. I wonder if they fully understood it themselves. But they were willing to take the risk.”