William Shatner Tek War 01 Tek War

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me. Oh, and that wasn't actually Dr. Danenberg." "Another android,
wasn't it?" "Yeah, it was."
"That explains why I didn't see any human remains."
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"From what we can determine from the descriptions of the passersby who
saw the lady before the blowup--the thing was a simulacrum of the
Danenberg woman."
Jake watched a flock of power gliders drifting far out over the ocean,
paralleling the hazy horizon. "Why would she have a sim?"
"People use them for lots of reasons. Around here celebs use andy
replicas of themselves to stand in at public events, to take their
place at a potentially dangerous event or even to handle lectures."
"But this sounds like Dr. Danenberg was expecting an attempt on her
life."
"That's one of the assumptions."
"Have you talked to Dr. Danenberg--the real one?"
"We'll certainly do that, soon as we find the lady. She's not at
SoCal Tech, not at home and not at several other obvious locations.
We're looking for her."
"So what really happened at the Boardwalk was that Gomez risked his
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life trying to keep one gadget from destroying another gadget."
"That's about it," agreed the captain. "Why were you and Gomez
meeting with her?
"You're going to have to ask the Cosmos Agency about that." The
captain grabbed Jake's arm. "I'm asking you."
Jake took Hambrick's hand from off his sleeve and stood. "I don't work
for you anymore."
"Just keep this in mind. As far as I'm concerned you still ought to be
on ice," said Captain Hambrick, rising. "You give me too much crap,
Cardigan, and I'll do everything I can to see you get sent back to the
Freezer."
"I'd figured that out before you even told me."
"I also think you ought to forget about working for Cosmos. You'd be
better off trying to find a nice quiet security guard job someplace."
Jake gave him a bleak grin. "This morning maybe I'd have considered
quitting. Not now, though--now I'm going to find out who sent that
kamikaze."
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"That noble bullshit doesn't impress me," said Hambrick "You've always
been a cold, calculating son of a bitch--that's why they all called you
the Android. Listen, if Gomez was lying in there dead now, you really
wouldn't give a damn. So don't pre end--"
"You bastard!" Jake's fist went back and he started to throw a punch.
But then he stopped. Shaking his head, he dropped his hands to his
sides and stepped back. "No, nope. I'm not going to let you goad me
into hitting you, Captain. You're not going to get me back up to the
Freezer that easy."
Hambrick laughed without opening his mouth. Giving Jake a disdainful
look, he turned and walked away.
Jake stood watching him until Hambrick was outside. He worked hard to
get his anger under control. That took several minutes.
The beautiful silver-skinned and platinum-haired receptionist said,
"I'm not an android."
"I'll keep that in mind." Jake was sitting in a licorice-colored
plastiglass chair in the Tower II reception room of the Cosmos
Detective Agency Building.
"What I'm getting at is, I'm a human being," she added, tapping a
finger against her silvery cheek. "I've been going through some what
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you might call changes in my life lately and I decided to experiment
with my basic look."
"It's striking."
"This is only my second day with the new makeup approach," she said.
"But so far three clients have confused me with the servomeehs and a
new 'got on the custodial staff tried to dust and polish me." "There
is a sort of mechanical aura."
"The trouble is, see, you can't just take the stuff off. You have to
go have it done at the same salon where they slapped it on in the first
place."
"You considering doing that already?" \"I am, except right now I
can't afford having it taken off, since
I haven't even finished paying for having it put on," she explained.
"You're the one who's a friend of Gomez, aren't you?"
"We're friends, yes."
"How is he? I just heard about his getting himself hurt." "He's doing
fine--except for the broken leg." "That's good news."
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"Send him in, Marny," said the emerald-green voxbox sitting atop her
stark white desk.
Marny pointed at the box and mouthed the words, "That's Has com." She
next pointed at a white door across the room. "You can go in now, Mr.
Cardigan."
Crinning, Jake left the chair and crossed to the door.
Walt Bascom's office was large and cluttered. Its walls were made of
blind plastiglass that showed nothing of the Laguna Sector outside.
Bascom was a small, compact man of fifty-five, sun brown and clad in an
expensive and considerably rumpled suit. He was seated on top of a
lucite desk in the middle of the oce, cross-legged, noodling on a
wheezy alto saxophone. There were piles of fax copies files, memos of
many colors, printout sheets, summonses and assorted paper ephemera
surrounding him on the clear, desktop. Steepled over a stack of
final-notice bills was a yellowed booklet titled BeBop Favorites of the
2oth Century.
Joke wended his way through the sprawl of folders, bundles of papers,
weapons, discarded clothes and abandoned dishware that lay between him
and his new employer.
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"I did," said Bascom as he set aside the saxophone.
"Did what?"
"Slept in my clothes--you were probably wondering if I had." "I
already knew you had. It's one of your trademarks." Jake took a
plascarton of old lazguns off a tin chair brushed off the accumulated
dust with the pair of paisley panties that were beneath the carton and
sat down, uninvited. "Did some research on you earlier in the day."
"That's only fair--since I've been researching you for several weeks."
Bascom wore his graying hair close cropped. After knuckling the top
of his head, he commenced rummaging the piles of material on his desk.
"How's Gomez doing?"
"Well,"
Bascom opened the {:older. "]onathan Cardigan, ]r.," he read {:from
the topmost sheet of fax paper "You've been described insubordinate,
sarcastic, irreverent, cynical, unpatriotic, disrespect{:-"
"Maybe you shouldn't have sprung me."
"I trust Gomez. He says you're okay."
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]ake leaned back in the chair. "And besides you don't have anybody
else who can get safely through Warbride's territory," he said.
"You've already had three Cosmos operatives killed down there."
"One killed." The agency chief held up his forefinger. "Other two are
simply missing."
"All three of them are dead and gone. That's another thing I found out
this morning."
Bascom scratched his head. "Gomez mentioned you had good sources of
information," he said. "Seems you really do--either that or you're
conning me."
"I quit lying at job interviews my second year in college," ]ake [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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