Tek Net (12 page)

“Up from being fourteen point eight the previous week.”

“Not good enough, and haven't I told you I don't like excessive optimism in a robot?”

“You have. Sorry, boss.”

“Rodriguez can't seem to run the Movie Palace right. Toss him out on—”

“Be better to wait,” advised Miles. “Since Rodriguez is the one who's masterminding your upcoming meeting with Anzelmo on the satellite.”

“Another thing, Miles—don't keep telling me stuff I already know,” warned Marriner. “I'm heading up to the Movie Palace now to talk to him.”

“You can fire the bozo
after
your confab with Anzelmo and his thugs.”

“I can junk
you
at any time, too,” he reminded.

“That's your privilege, sure. But you'll never find another multibot like me.”

“Bullshit, the showrooms are overloaded with them,” Marriner countered. “How're our software kiosks in Cuba doing?”

“On the—Hold it, boss. Priority call coming through.”

The right-hand screen turned red.

“Who the hell is it?”

“Thelma.”

“Jesus, I only left her less than a half hour ago.”

“This has to do with Jill Bernardino.”

“Talk to me, Thel.”

The thickset woman appeared on the screen. “One of Anzelmo's toadies—that obsequious Julie—just contacted us,” she said. “They've tracked the Bernardino woman to the NecroPlex down in the Glendale Sector of Greater LA.”

“And taken care of her?”

“They'll be doing that as soon as they—”

“Don't contact me until she's dead and gone,” Marriner told her. “Let's see that Cuba material, Miles.”

“Here you go, boss.”

19

Gomez and Jake had eased to a halt just around the corridor corner from the entry to the underground warehouse complex.

The curly-haired detective had activated his sniffer gadget and was, as near to silently as possible, getting a reading on the nearest warehouse.

After the gadget spoke to him through an earbug, Gomez leaned close to his partner and whispered, “A goon, armed with a lazgun, is sitting in the corridor guarding the door. Door's open and there's nobody in the warehouse proper but one woman. And she could well be Jill.”

Nodding, Jake didn't speak.

Gomez slipped the gadget away in a side pocket, retrieved his bouquet from the floor and concealed his stungun back among the fake yellow roses. “As planned,” he said. “Back me up.”

Jake nodded again as Gomez, his steps becoming wobbly, headed for the bend.

By the time he reached the open doorway there was nobody guarding it. Gomez, walking like a drunken mourner, made his way to the entrance.

There was Jill, alive, sitting on the edge of a cot far across the shadowy warehouse. And there was a hulky lout in a chair talking to her. “That
mujer
can charm just about anybody,” he thought as he paused on the threshold.

The guard sensed him, about then. He popped to his feet, spun and pulled out a snub-nosed lazgun. “What the hell do you want, buddy?”

Fingers closing on the stungun hidden in his flowers, Gomez raised his voice. “Trying to find the final wrestling place,” he began. “No, make that the final
resting
place of …” He left the sentence unfinished, taking in the room through narrowed eyes.

Jill moved her right hand slightly and gave him a very quick nod of recognition behind the guard's back.

Gomez came wobbling into the big room. “What the dickens is his name? Oh, yeah, Earl S. Grosse, my best friend and—”

“Jerk, this isn't part of the NecroPlex,” the angered guard said, pointing the lazgun at him. “Get your ass elsewhere, quick.”

Gomez kept on moving further into the warehouse.

Jumping up from the narrow cot, Jill tagged after the husky young man. “Take it easy, relax,” she told him, getting hold of the arm that held the gun. “He's just a harmless mourner who's had a bit too much to drink.”

“That's absolutely true,” asserted the detective.

“Turn around and scram. Otherwise I'll cut you in half with this lazgun.”

“Hey, no need to get all belligerent. Soon as you show me where my pal Earl is—” Gomez seemed to trip over his own feet at this point.

He fell forward, slid along the neowood floor. “Distract him,” he said to Jill.

She obliged by delivering a series of hard punches to Buzz' kidney area.

“Jill, what the hell are you doing?” The guard started to turn to shove her away.

That was when Gomez jerked his stungun free of the fake blossoms, rolled twice to the left and then sat up shooting.

Buzz huffed. His hands started rising up toward his chest, where the stungun beam had hit him.

Then his fingers spread wide and he dropped the lazgun.

Jill sprinted, put a foot in front of his and gave him a helpful push with her hand across his broad back.

The guard tumbled, sprawled, passed out.

“Very helpful,” acknowledged Gomez, rising and dusting himself off. “Any more louts or goons in the vicinity,
chiquita?
”

“We still make a pretty good team, don't we?” She moved close to him, kissed him once on the cheek. “Two new guards will come on duty in about fifteen minutes to replace Buzz.”

“You and this slumbering oaf are on a first-name basis?”

“He never told me his full and entire name, Sid. Don't tell me you're jealous?”

He took her hand. “Let's vacate our present location,” he suggested, pulling her toward the doorway.

“Thanks for rescuing me,” she said. “I knew you would.”

“
Sí
,” he said. “It's a hobby of mine.”

They were, with Jake leading and Gomez and Jill following, heading for an exit from the underground cemetery network.

“We should be about five minutes from this particular way out,” said Jake.

This was another formal burying ground the three of them were passing through. The windblown grass, the immense weeping willows and the stately angels who presided over many of the graves were all holographic projections.

Jill shuddered as she hurried along an imitation gravel path. “I almost ended up being buried down here someplace myself.”

Moving up to trot along beside her, Gomez asked, “Is that what they were threatening you with?”

“I'm not actually certain, Sid,” she answered. “Buzz—the only guard, by the way, I ever had any conversations with—implied they had specific orders
not
to kill me. I'm not sure, though, that I believe him.”

“Who gave those orders?”

“That I couldn't find out.”

Jake passed a six-foot-high angel whose wings gently flapped. The path forked just beyond that grave and he took the left-hand turn.

Following, Gomez asked his former wife, “You ever hear them mention Johnny Trocadero?”

“Trocadero heads up the San Diego Tek cartel, doesn't he?”

“That's the very
hombre
, yes. Apparently he's eager to expand his holdings,” amplified Gomez. “He's likely the
pendejo
who ordered your—Oops.”

The sniffer gadget in his pocket had begun to make a faint chirping sound.

“
Momentito
, Jake,” he called to his partner, slowing his pace and then stopping next to a simulated black marble tomb.

Jake came back to join him. “Trouble?”

Gomez, head tilted slightly forward, was listening to the earbug from the gadget. “
Es verdad
,” he replied glumly. “Seems we now have a small parade on our tail.”

“How many?”

“This thing is picking up emanations from five humans, two andies and—
caramba
. A full half-dozen robot tracking dogs.”

“Trocadero's crew must've found out Jill's gone from the warehouse.”

Frowning, Gomez said, “If these are local goons, Jake, they're all of them toting British-made weaponry.”

“How far behind are they?”

He checked with the sniffer. “Little less than three cemeteries back and catching up fast.”

Jake pointed southward. “We know of two other ways to get clear of the NecroPlex,” he said. “I'll take one, you and Jill use the other. That'll split up our posse and maybe give us an advantage.”

“
Bueno
.”

“Get her to the agency,” said Jake. “I'll meet you there soon as I can.” Pivoting on his heel, he started away.

20

This cemetery that they were racing through looked hundreds of years old. The small, low tombstones seemed weathered and leaned at odd angles. At its center stood an old church, made of wood and painted white.

Gomez and Jill were running hard now, zigzagging between the tumbledown gravestones.

When they passed the front steps of the little New England-style church, Jill suddenly stopped, gasping. “Got to rest, Sid,” she told him, one hand moving slowly up and down. “Catch my breath, only a minute, please.”

“A minute, but
nada más
. We don't want this to be our final resting place.” He paused near her, looking back the way they'd come. Then he tugged out the sniffer gadget and checked it. “C'mon,
cara
, the pursuit group did split up when Jake took the less traveled road. But we still have three humans, an andy and four robot hounds on our heels and they're closing the gap.”

“Let's go then.” Her face was flushed, speckled with perspiration. Her dark hair was tangled. “Damn it, I thought we'd gotten away clear.”

“We will, but it's going to take a bit more effort.” He took her arm and urged her into motion.

They ran.

Out of this latest cemetery, then along a metal-walled tunnel, then up a slanting ramp that led them to a long imitation marble corridor that was rich with shelves holding hundreds of gilded burial urns.

“I bet if you spent enough time down here,” speculated Gomez as they ran, “you'd end up thinking morbid thoughts.”

After they entered yet another long metallic tunnel, Jill said, “I hear an odd noise behind us.”

“
Sí
, that's the patter of metal feet,” he said. “At least one of those damned robot tracking dogs is catching up.”

“Sounds like more than one.”

Gomez kicked up his pace, sprinting ahead.

He ran around a bend in the tunnel. After running for nearly a minute, he looked back and found that Jill wasn't there anymore.

“
Dios
,” he muttered as he stopped and went back.

She was on her hands and knees on the ribbed flooring. Breathing shallowly, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I stumbled, Sid. Nothing major.”

He looked beyond her and then yanked his stungun from its shoulder holster. “Roll over against the wall, Jill.”

Coming through the shadows, not more than a hundred yards from them, was a large robot hound. It was a gunmetal color and its plazeyes glowed a fierce red. The mechanical creature's jaw was filled, crowded, with sharp-edged silvery metal teeth.

The metal paws made hollow clattering sounds as, galloping, it narrowed the distance between them. A tiny silver knob protruding from its skull was giving out a continual reedy beeping.

Gomez knelt, knees wide, and swung up his gun. “Stay hunkered,” he told the woman.

The robot hound left the floor of the tunnel and launched itself into the air, aiming straight for the fallen Jill.

The beam from Gomez' stunner took it in the chest.

The metallic dog gave a tinny yelp, quivered, dropped to the floor. It got up, though, and starting heading for Jill again.

“Hey,
perro
, this is supposed to stop you in your damned tracks.” Gomez fired the stungun once more.

The dog was nearly to Jill, teeth starting to snap. The second beam caused it to swerve, slam into the wall as it lost its balance.

Leaping up, Gomez ran over and shot a third time, standing right above the slowed mechanism.

The hound's teeth made a final try to bite at Jill before it collapsed.

“That's a very strong little
madre
,” observed Gomez as he helped her to rise. “Usually you can disable them with one shot from a stungun.”

“Thanks again, Sid.”

His arm around her, they started away.

The second dog that found them had two men with it.

Gomez was crouched before a narrow metal door at the end of a low tunnel. “I'll get this lock device jobbed in a few more seconds,
chiquita
,” he assured her.

“Sid, I think I hear footsteps again.” Jill was leaning against the wall, arms folded under her breasts, breathing slowly in and out. “Not just a bot dog either. And coming up fast.”

“I hear them, too,” he admitted. “But once we get this door open, we'll be in the outside world once more.”

The lock gave off a click and then a whir.

“
Bueno
.” Gomez nudged the door with his elbow.

It didn't budge for a few seconds, then, with a rusty creaking, it swung open outward. Grey daylight showed.

Jill took his hand and they ran out of the final tunnel and up into a small battered kiosk.

Gomez shut the door behind them.

They stepped out into a large circular public plaza. Three skyvans were parked near its edge and another van was dropping down through the early morning. Copper-plated robots, most of them wearing bright blue overalls and yellow straw hats, were in the process of setting up outdoor food stands and counters. A pretty blonde android in an imitation gingham dress was arranging a display of flowerpots with artificial plants in them.

A pair of robots was sending aloft a floating litesign that proclaimed:
Welcome to the Pasadena Sector Farmers' Market
.

“That's not too bad,” commented Gomez as they jogged away from the NecroPlex exit. “To come back from the dead in Pasadena.”