Tek Net (7 page)

“Me too.”

“Why do you suppose that is?”

The bot's arm creaked when he raised his hand. “Must be that breathing mask she's wearing.”

“I do believe you're right.” His stroked his wispy whiskers with his fingertips. “The bloody thing filters out most of her words, it does.”

“Shall I,” offered the robot, raising his big metal hand again, “rip it off?”

“No, that's all right. I can handle the job.”

Eleanor pleaded, “No, please … I really won't be able to breathe without … it.”

The robot shook his head sympathetically. “That's a pity for sure, mum.”

“Maybe then you'd best speak up now. Tell us what we came to find out.”

“I don't … know where … he is.”

The bald man glanced at his companion. “Did you catch any of what she just said?”

“Nary a word, no.”

“Sorry, love.” The bald man shook his head, sadly, and reached for the breathing mask.

But he never managed to touch it.

Instead both of his hands went flapping up above his head, His body stiffened, he gave a choking sigh, went dropping forward.

When he fell across Eleanor's lap, she drew both knees aside and that deflected him.

He hit the side of her chair with his thinly bewhiskered chin, bounced, slammed into the floor on elbows and knees. Stretched straight out and was completely and totally unconscious.

“Don't touch it,” said Jake to the big green robot.

Jake was standing in the now open bedroom doorway, his stungun aimed at the mechanical man.

The robot had been in the process of opening a panel in his side and tugging out a lazgun. “You ought not to have stunned him,” he said.

“I know, but every time I see a couple of louts mistreating someone—I get this uncontrollable impulse.” He grinned. “Hell, there it is again.”

This silent stungun beam struck the bot just above the opening in his torso. He started to rattle, taking two thumping steps to the left.

Jake sprinted over, gave the disabled mechanism a forceful shove with the palm of his free hand.

The robot smacked the floor, stretched out flat next to his partner.

“You don't have a very good security system here, Mrs. Monkwood,” he told her. “Anybody can get in with very little effort.”

“I'm … glad you … got through.”

Walking around the fallen intruders, Jake lifted her out of the chair and carried her over to a low black sofa. “My name is Jake Cardigan,” he said, setting her down carefully. “I'm an operative with the Cosmos Detective Agency.”

“Yes, I've heard of … you,” she said, leaning back. “Well, not … you specifically … but your agency.”

“We're trying to find Jill Bernardino,” he said, straddling a straight chair that faced her.

“That … whore.”

“You know her?”

“I know she and … my husband are … sleeping together,” answered Eleanor. “What's happened … to her?”

“Looks like she's been kidnapped,” he said. “Possibly by these very lads who dropped in on you. We'll be able to find that out.”

“Why do they … want Jeffrey?”

“Probably because somebody believes he knows what Jill knows.”

“And … what is … that?”

Jake shook his head. “Not sure exactly. But it seems to be connected with something several big European Tek cartels are planning.”

“Tek,” she said. “That … makes sense.”

“Your husband has some—”

“While we were still together … he became involved with … a man named Ernest Shiboo. He … supposedly makes his living … supplying very sophisticated … androids to … very rich clients,” she said. “He lives … up in NorCal … someplace.”

“Ernie Shiboo,” said Jake, nodding. “He used to be fairly high up in the Hokori Tek cartel.”

“I suspected … he was supplying … Jeffrey with Tek chips.”

“That was their only association—customer and client?”

Eleanor concentrated on her breathing for a moment, leaning back further on the sofa. “There was … something else,” she answered finally. “Jeffrey teaches in the … communications area … and there was … a show business link … somewhere.”

“Shiboo was using him as a consultant on some project maybe?”

“By that time … Jeffrey and I weren't … He didn't … discuss much about … his activities with me.”

“You think Shiboo knew Jill Bernardino?”

“Yes … I suspect Jeffrey … introduced her to that terrible man.”

“If your husband is hiding out,” asked Jake, “do you have any idea where he might go?”

“No, I never … knew about his hideaways,” she said. “Women like Jill … Bernardino might … but not … me.”

Jake stood up, sliding out his palmphone. “I'll arrange to have these goons transported elsewhere.”

“By the police?”

“Eventually,” he said, grinning. “First we'll ask them a few pertinent questions. I'll also have the agency send someone to watch over you for a while. Need a medic?”

She nodded at her little fallen medibot. “My robot can take care of me.”

Jake eyed the fallen mechanism. “Doesn't look all that efficient.”

“It isn't, but—”

“If you don't mind, I'll get a medic of our own to drop in,” he suggested.

Eleanor managed a faint smile. “No, that would be … fine,” she said. “And … if you find out that my husband is okay … well, I suppose … I'd like to know that.”

11

The pudgy Japanese cried out, “Your flying is much too bumpy, Herky.”

“Don't call me Herky,” came the reply from the cabin of the skyvan. “And I don't have any damn control over turbulence, Ernie.”

Ernest Shiboo sighed before bending to pick up the check-over rod, which the last bounce had caused him to drop. “Well, let's make sure you're shipshape, gumdrop,” he said to the dormant android he was standing in front of.

There were twenty-one androids flying up from SoCal to NorCal in the big cargo compartment of the van. Each was a pretty blonde teenage girl, each was dressed in a black short-skirted maid's uniform.

Shiboo had to give every one a last-minute inspection. He was working along the second row of seven. He ran the small copper-tipped rod down from head to toe, holding it about an inch from the andy's body.

When it was hovering just below the waist, the rod's voxbox said, “Fanny.”

“Oh, tapioca,” murmured Shiboo, annoyed.

He lifted the short black skirt to inspect the android's backside. There was a large smudge of sky-blue paint on the left buttock.

Straightening up, the Japanese reached under the maid's lace collar and touched the activate spot. “Why didn't you mention, Ally, that you'd acquired an unsightly splotch on your toke?”

“Hey, is that my job?” asked the reanimated blonde. “You ginks are supposed to inspect us after each job and I'll tell you something, Ernie, most of your maintenance crew are either Tekheads or brainstimmers and they wouldn't have noticed if my entire butt had broken out in polka dots.”

“You keep forgetting to address me as Mr. Shiboo, lollipop.”

“Hooey.”

“How'd that smear get there?”

“Ask your last client—that grabby Mr. Goodrich in the San Luis Obispo Sector,” she replied. “He tried to get fresh with me in the nursery during that bash he and his missus threw last weekend. The bots had just finished painting the room.”

Shiboo frowned. “Wonder why they'd paint a little girl's room blue?”

“Ask Goodrich.”

Crouching, Shiboo lifted her skirt again and squinted at the blue buttock. “I have an excellent—an extremely excellent—reputation as a provider and leaser of the finest-grade androids and servos,” he said, rising up. “In the last three years I've built this business up from—”

“Maybe you should've stuck to peddling Tek, gumdrop.”

“That'll be enough of that sort of talk,” he warned her. “How'd you get that sort of data into your head anyway?”

“Must be a virus.”

Shiboo scowled at her. “Go into the workshop at the back of the van, Ally,” he instructed. “Use a litegun to clean off that damned stain.”

“I'm not supposed to mess with any maintenance.”

“Listen, butterball, I have to deliver twenty-one tip-top android maids to Leon Marriner at his Mansion number five in the Tiburon Enclave in exactly seventeen minutes,” he told her, putting one hand on her black-clad shoulder. “The head of the whole entire Marriner Media empire isn't going to accept an andy with a sky-blue backside
and
I'm not about to offer him one. Nor will I risk showing up with only twenty of you.”

Ally, after smoothing her skirt, wandered off in the direction of the repair area.

The skyvan hit another air pocket and the floor bounced several times. She lurched, hit against another android maid, knocking her off her feet.

“Easy, easy,” cautioned Shiboo as he hurried over to pick up the fallen andy. “We can't afford any dents at this late hour.”

Shiboo fidgeted in the passenger seat. “I'm sorry I've been such a nag today, Herky.”

“Don't call me Herky.” The android who was piloting the skyvan was handsome, muscular-looking. His golden-blond hair was wavy and long. “My name is Hercules/30F and this has come up again and again at our weekly meetings with the techno-counselor.”

“I know, forgive me,” apologized the Japanese. “Whenever I'm worried—scared actually, in this case—I tend to turn cranky.”

“You really have to learn to relax, Ernie,” advised Hercules. “Besides, the odds are that the Bernardino bitch's disappearance had nothing at all to do with you, not a damn thing.”

Frowning, Shiboo shook his head. “No, I'm certain that Jill's being kidnapped has a whole lot to do with … well, with what Marriner and those overseas Tek bastards are up to.”

“I hate to pick on you,” said the android, “but I did mention at the time that you were a jerk to confide anything in that Bernardino woman.”

“She was paying me a nice fat fee for information.”

“Information about the Sonny Hokori cartel,” reminded Hercules. “A defunct operation that nobody gives a damn about anymore—certainly nobody who's in a position to knock you off or rough you up.”

“I suppose I wanted to impress her,” admitted the Japanese. “So I threw in a little of what I'd been finding out about Marriner's latest project. Hints really, nothing more.”

“More than hints, Ernie, or you wouldn't be scared silly now.”

“You know, Herk, I've brought this up with our counselor quite a few times lately,” Shiboo said to the android. “But you really aren't at all sympathetic to me at times.”

“Whose fault is it if I lack empathy? Did I design and build myself?”

“All right, I planned you and oversaw your construction,” he acknowledged. “Still, as I recall, I built in a lot more kindness and understanding.”

“What you're trying to do now is mix our domestic problems up with our business ventures. Not smart.”

“I am, you're absolutely right.”

“All we have to worry about today is delivering these nubile maids to Marriner's number five digs,” said Hercules. “We turn them over to that bossy private sec of his, collect our handsome fee and take off for Greater LA and home.”

“Thelma's okay,” said Shiboo. “She's been extremely helpful to us in building the business up these past couple years.”

The android said, “We provide a first-rate product. We're doing Marriner and all the rest of our snooty customers a favor—it's not the other way around, Ernie.”

“You're right again.”

“Now quit looking like you've just come back from your own funeral,” Hercules suggested. “We're going to be setting down at number five in a couple more minutes.” He tapped out a landing pattern on the dash.

“Quite probably Marriner himself won't even show up at this particular mansion of his until the day of the party.” Shiboo sat up straighter in his seat. “And even when he is in residence, I rarely see him.”

“Besides which, nobody in the entire Marriner Media empire has any notion that you've been blabbing their secrets to Jill Bernardino.”

The mansion and grounds in the Tiburon Enclave covered five and a half acres at the edge of the expanded San Francisco Bay. The home itself was an exact replica of a late-nineteenth-century Victorian mansion, and the surrounding acres included a large formal garden, a nine-hole golf course, a swimming pavilion and a woods containing quite a few tall simulated redwoods.

The visitors' landing area was surrounded by holographic cypress trees.

After going through the recognition and permission routines, Hercules brought the skyvan in for a landing.

The landing wasn't especially smooth and two of the android maids back in the cargo area went crashing to the floor with considerable thunking and rattling.

“Herky, you've really got to improve your landing techniques.” Shiboo unhooked from the safety gear and ran into the other room to get the fallen andies to their feet and check for damage.

Then he came back into the cabin and released the door on his side.

It opened to reveal the short, stocky Thelma Glanzman standing out in the sunny afternoon. Hands on hips, looking up at him. “Hello, Ernest,” she said.

“Thelma, gumdrop, how are you?” said Shiboo, climbing out of the skyvan. “Just wait until you get a look at this batch of—”

“Get up to the house right away quick,” she told him. “Marriner wants to talk to you.”

12

An image of the bald, scraggly-whiskered man, half life size, appeared on one of the holograph stages in Bascom's tower office.