ONLY WHEN HE WAS ASSURED THAT HIS PARTNER was going to be okay and Hyaki had been choptered out did he allow the airmeds to clean his own wounds and treat the most seriously damaged areas with sprayskin. He declined to leave the scene, refusing a lift to hospital. As might be expected, media teams were onsite almost as quickly as the airmeds. When a team from Forensics finally arrived, they had to run the usual gauntlet of vitwits who peppered the new arrivals with questions they could not answer. Officers and a pair of department flashmen from Comrel cordoned them off as two squads went to work on the scene.
The nature of the destruction ruled out natural causes such as a gas explosion even before the studious evaluators had a chance to talk to Cardenas. Ignoring his wounds while trying to keep visions of the battered, unconscious Hyaki from flashing through his mind, the Inspector insisted on joining them in their work.
"There was an initial detonation that was as much bait as killing charge," he told the male and female officers who confronted him, taking notes, "followed by the added lure of an injured woman crying out for help. Then a whole series of secondary explosions." Angrily, he kicked aside a twisted strip of metal wall cladding. "Whoever cojoned this casa wanted to make sure and kill anyone and everyone who was inside."
The female Forensics spec was kneeling, passing a scanner over a still-smoking cavity within the greater crater, applying the kind of high-class infosuck for which the department was well-known. "Pretty extreme way of dealing with burglars."
"Depends on what kind of insurance you have." Having dropped a select handful of dirt and debris into the mouth of a device that resembled a portable sonic oven, her partner waited patiently for it to produce intelligible results. "Some companies will pay full replacement if the homeowner can prove they expiated two or more intruders." He smiled thinly. "That's morally indefensible as well as highly illegal, of course. But try and get a conviction in court against the corporation making the payout. Plenty of cleanies own shady policies that carry evanescent forced-entry extermination riders." Frowning, he gave the oven a firm smack.
"Here we go," he muttered, staring at the readouts that promptly blinked to life. "Pretty stylish package of ingredients." He glanced meaningfully at the attentive Cardenas. "Where death-dealing is concerned, your suspects show some sophisticated taste. Hellex expanders, Tarifa bursters, and Jaffna jelly. All sequenced and set off with Taichug micros programmed to react in concert with your lady-in-distress reaper." He favored the intuit with a longer look. "I heard the preliminary. Your open spinner forwarded it downtown. How'd you know it was a recording, that there was nobody in the house?"
Cardenas was following the progress of the other specs. "The anxiety in the voice rang false. She was a good actor; but it's still acting."
The specialist nodded, gesturing at the inurban devastation through which his colleagues were picking. "Whoever's behind this sure as hell didn't want anybody to get out."
"Or to find anything." Kneeling, Cardenas pulled something from the rubble. It was the upper half of a doll, the gelatinous simulated eyes still moist. Disconnected, it automatically gazed back up at him out of limpid synthesized oculars.
The spec blinked as he dumped the contents of the oven into a specimen bag. "Find what?"
The Inspector did not drop, but instead carefully placed, the piece of homunculus back on the ground. Something in the synthetic eyes made him use a foot to cover it with debris. "If I knew that, I wouldn't have to ask the question. What I do know is that no one turns their home into a bomb this sophisticated just to muerto a couple of skraggers."
Despite his injuries, he insisted on joining the assessors who were working the street, questioning stunned residents of the heretofore peaceful neighborhood. The two flashmen from the department were busy massaging the media, doing their best to persuade the skeets that the destruction could not have been prevented.
The few resident citizens on off-day who came stumbling out of their individually secured abodes wore the dazed expressions typical of cleanies for whom daily existence was a succession of relatively predictable concerns over bills, professional worries, and family. Ordinary, everyday problems that were not a matter of life and death as they were for the underfolk of the Strip.
Cardenas approached a wide-eyed older woman clad only in swimsuit and throwover. Evidently, she had been relaxing in a backyard pool when the Anderson home had tried its best to exterminate the two visiting federales. A few lingering beads of water still clung to her lower legs, fighting evaporation. She flinched slightly when the Inspector drew near.
"Nothing to be afraid of," he reassured her. "You don't need to run."
"I wasn't going to-well, maybe I was," she mumbled. No maybe about it, Cardenas knew. He did not explain to her that the subtle movements of her body and face revealed her intentions to him as clearly as if she had loudly declaimed them.
He flashed his ident, saw her relax slightly. "I won't involve you, I promise." He indicated the smoking ruins of the house in front of them, now smothered in flame suppressant from the hovering fire department chopter. "Did you know the occupants? A Mr. George Anderson and…"
"Surtsey," the woman stammered. "Her name is Surtsey. They had a daughter." Her eyes were pools of concern. Not for potentially extirpated neighbors, but for herself and her own kin. "What happened?"
"Too soon to tell." Cardenas felt no compunction about comforting her with a lie. "Maybe a gas line explosion. Maybe something volatile in the house." He did his best to make it sound as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. "Happens all the time."
"But you're here." She gestured past him. "There seem to be a lot of police."
"Routine," he confided casually. "Just depends on who happens to be in the area when the emergency happens. There was no one at home, so nobody got muertoed. You knew the Andersons?"
"Very casually. A 'hello, good morning, how are you?' kind of knowing. People here in Olmec value their privacy." And pay for it, she didn't have to add. "They seemed nice enough."
"Did Ms. Anderson have a job?"
Showing signs of relaxation, the woman turned thoughtful. "If she did, it was in-house. I didn't see her go out much. And she always seemed to be at home when her husband arrived. She drove the girl to soche, though. Every day. And brought her home. Not that I paid any attention, really."
Cardenas nodded, conveying the impression that she had provided valuable information. "Any idea which soche the daughter attended?"
The neighbor shook her head and tugged the throwover tighter around her bare, wrinkled shoulders. "No. My own children are grown." Glancing to her right, she pointed out a boy and girl standing in front of two younger citizens. All four were staring at the incomprehensible wreckage that had suddenly and explosively materialized in the middle of their quiet neighborhood. The parents said little, but their offspring were chattering away animatedly.
"You might ask the Martinez family. Their boy is about the same age as the Anderson child, and I seem to remember hearing that they went to the same soche."
So they did, the boy confirmed to Cardenas, although he was in a younger soche group than Katla Anderson. Thanking them, Cardenas turned to leave, only to find himself confronted by a pair of vitwits. He stalled the chattering skeets until Morgan from Comrel could intervene, pattering the pair away despite their persistent efforts to challenge the Inspector. By the time they succeeded in breaking free of the flashman, Cardenas was tucked into a cruiser and humming swiftly away from the site. Have to mess the flashgal a gracias, he told himself as the scene of suburban devastation receded behind him. He was not comfortable dealing with the media, especially those who recognized or knew him as an intuit.
The cruiser's spinner traced Hyaki's ambulance and the obedient car conveyed the Inspector to Nogales Central, the Department's hospital of choice for officers injured in the line of duty. The medico flashman who intercepted him in the fourteenth-floor hallway informed him that the sergeant was still in surgery. Cardenas did not press the earnest young man for details. His tone was sufficient to assure the Inspector that the big sergeant was going to be all right, because Cardenas could tell that the man was speaking the truth and not concocting a convenient professional lie. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of the afternoon there, staying on well into evening, until he was finally allowed a look into Recovery.
Eyes closed, facedown, Hyaki floated swathed in freshly adhering epispray. The pinkish, artificial epidermis was slowly blending with the sergeant's own skin, sealing and healing the horrific charring that covered most of his broad, naked back. It was impossible to tell how much of his own epidermis remained. As with any severe burn victim, he drifted in suspension above the bed, hovering in a magnetic field designed to keep his severely damaged skin from coming in contact with any solid surface. Even the finest, softest bedsheets could multiply the trauma of an acute burn victim. The diamagnetic properties of the human body that allowed it to oppose the magnetic field applied by the hospital Perkins projector had only been properly and practically realized in the last thirty years.
Tubes ran from the sergeant's nose and pelvis. Scanners focused on his torso monitored readings from nanosurges that had been inserted into his body at strategic points. Cardenas had spent enough time (too much time, he reflected calmly) in hospitals and seen enough apparatus in action to allow him to interpret many of the instrument readings. Overall, they were stable, if not cause for celebration.
A dark, quiet anger had been building in him ever since he had left the crime scene. The fact that the ordinary, unremarkable house in the inurbs had tried to kill him and his partner was reason enough for fury. That it had been indiscriminate in its murderous automaturgy only rendered the attempt that much more deserving of denunciation. That it had not been conceived to dissuade everyday crime such as burglary was self-evident. Not only was the system far too elaborate and expensive, it hardly succeeded in preserving the owner's household goods. It was designed to welcome intruders-and then slaughter them, to the extent that the owner of the system was prepared to sacrifice the entire dwelling in the effort.
If not thieves, and in all likelihood not visiting federales, then who? Rage was the rationale for most home security systems. Fear was the foundation of the much more sophisticated setup that had nearly killed him and his partner. Who, or what, did an apparently ordinary inurban family like the Andersons have to fear to the extent that they were willing to turn their own residence into as elaborate a booby-trap as Cardenas had ever encountered? Of one thing he was already certain: it was tied to the reason the deceased George Anderson needed two identities.
The floating body in IC Recovery stirred ever so slightly. Cardenas's expression did not change. He could not intuit the unconscious. He did not have to. The sight of his friend's hovering torso was enough. Endorphin drip or not, Hyaki had to be suffering. It would worsen when the sergeant awoke and was once more able to feel. There was nothing Cardenas could do about that.
But he could damn well do something else. For a start, he very badly wanted to have a chat with the erstwhile Ms. George Anderson.
His fury at the indifferent instrumentation that had nearly robbed him of his friend and partner did not begin to ebb until that night, as he sat in his codo, overlooking the landscaped and artfully contoured channel of the Santa Rita River. Drip-watered vegetation softened the harsh terrain on either side of the waterway. A single nocturnal jogger, her shoes and cap suffused with glowing pale blue quantum dots, was all that moved beneath the half-moon. Her belt pulsed rhythmically, warning potential muggers that her outfit was fully charged and ready to stun any attacker foolish enough to make a grab for her.
Beyond the river stretched the lights of the Strip, running all the way to the Golfo California. The previous night's downpour had cleansed the air, revealing stars that were wholly indifferent to the insignificant alternations mankind had wrought on the ancient Sonoran terrain. The tranquil vista helped to ease his troubled thoughts. So did the chilled Dos Equis in his hand.
Downing the last of it, he set the empty bottle down alongside its three empty siblings. Evacuated of beer, the disposable induction coil that was woven into the glass promptly shut down. The glass began to warm immediately. Swiveling in the chair, Cardenas muttered at his vit. The wall unit blinked to life and offered up a selection of suggested inanities for casual viewing. Sprawled in a chair, clad only in his underwear, he stared at the slowly scrolling readout without seeing it.
The medical portents were fine, but as long as he was stuck in IC, Hyaki could not be regarded as being out of danger. If the big fat slotho died…
Ignoring the proffered offerings of laughter and documentary, he opted for a snooze soother. As he had done on innumerable other nights, he fell asleep in the chair.
Tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac, the Mary Anson Carter Soche was a neat, self-contained complex designed to instruct children ages four to thirteen in all aspects of Real Life. Pre-university academics, of course, had not been taught in schools since the middle of the century. Those subjects were far better mastered in the peace and privacy of a child's residence, with the aid of home boxes and away from the distractions of one's age peers. At fourteen, a child entered into two years of analytical studies and advanced soche, and at sixteen, choices were made between higher education, vocational apprenticeship programs, public service, and a plethora of less-defining adult options such as the military.
In soche, a child learned about the psychology of male-female relationships, dating, the institution of marriage, sex, how to open and manage a bank account, how to perform simple household repairs, deal with credit, purchase a residence, handle lawyers, consult with doctors, plan a vacation, shop for goods and services, buy and cook food-all the critical components of everyday life that bumbling previous generations had somehow expected children to learn on their own, usually by utterly inadequate variations of social osmosis. In other words, all the really important things. Science and math, geography and language, history and literature, art and civics-all these were better studied at home, via a household box.
From eight in the morning until noon, four days a week, children gathered in their local soche to learn what the tribe of mankind expected of them: how to be decent human beings and survive in a world that grew more complex not by the year, but by the day. Into this bubbling preadolescent brew had been enrolled one twelve-year-old named Katla Anderson, whom Angel Cardenas badly wanted to interview. The elderly neighborhood resident he had spoken with outside the devastated Anderson dwelling had told him that the girl's mother always took her to soche and brought her home again. With that in mind, he found himself flashing his ident to the armed guard at the entrance.
"Como se happening?" he offered conversationally.
Automatic pistol protruding prominently from his hip holster, stun spray dangling from a chain attached to a vest pocket, the bored sentry strummed his beard and shrugged. "Nada much, homber. Who you here to arrest? Teacher or nin?" He perked up a little. "Hope it's a teacher. This is a quiet soche and I like most of the nins."
The Inspector stepped through the deactivated gate. As soon as he was through, the guard reactivated it. A soft, ominous hum indicated that a microwave barrier powerful enough to crisp an intruder had been reenergized in the visitor's wake.
"Neither nada," Cardenas explained. "I just need to talk to one of the students."
Swiveling in his seat, the guard scanned the security bib. "This ain't about the detonation of that ice cream truck last month, is it? That's been resolved. Our nins had nothing to do with it." He snorted disapprovingly. "Was a bunch of antisocs from Miranos urb."
"I just need to ask a few quick questions." Cardenas's tone was as patient as it was intentionally unenlightening.
The guard gave up trying to mine information from the visitor. "Identity of student?" he asked officiously.
"Anderson, Katla." Peering past the guard, the Inspector studied the security bib.
The sentry nodded to himself. "Yeah, I know the name. Got the attendance roster pretty well memorized. Don't recall actually talking to the girl, though." The brisk movements of his fingers on the keyboard belied his age. As a safety measure, the security bib was not designed to be operated by vorec.
More finger flicking. There were two hundred and sixty-three LEDs on the bib. Eighteen flashed red, the rest green. The guard tapped one of the red indicators. "She's not here today." He leaned back in his seat. "Out sick, maybe. But she's not here."
Cardenas was far less surprised by the news than the guard. "Could her monitor be defective? Or masked?"
The guard pushed out his lower lip. "Could have gone dead. Or if she's working in lab, the signal could be masked, although we try not to put the nins in a situation where that's possible. Sometimes happens en masse in cooking class, though. Radiation interference. It can get real bad when they're doing holiday poultry." He worked the board. "Go see Alicia Tavares; room eleven. She's Anderson's matriculator for the month." Swiveling in the chair, he pointed. "Down the entry hall, second door on your left, other side of the wildlife preserve. She's teaching Advanced Commuting right now."
The Inspector gave his thanks and strode off in the indicated direction, passing rooms in which children were learning the social skills necessary to survive in a society more multifarious than most. Exiting the main building, he found himself wandering through a miniature version of the celebrated New Mexican Jornada del Muerto, complete to desert landscaping, waterhole, and reproductions of historic artifacts-all replicated in the middle of the urban, industrialized Strip to show its youngest citizens what life once was, and in places still was, beyond the induction tubes and malls and playwhirls.
Entering a subsidiary structure, he found his way to room eleven. His ident bracelet ran through several thousand municipal code combinations before settling in a few seconds on one that operated the classroom door, granting him entrance.
Inside, he found two dozen pairs of eyes regarding him intently.
The walls that were not windowed with shatterproof, polarized glass alloy were covered with drawings and motilites and artscapes depicting various modes of contemporary transportation. At the moment, the class was dissecting the interior of an intercontinental hypersonic transport, but not to study the aerodynamics of its design or the physics of its hydrogen-driven engines. For those who were interested, such technical details could be better analyzed at home. Instead, they were learning travel etiquette: how to order food, how to eat while onboard, how to use the bathroom, how to deal with troublesome other passengers-in brief, how to survive and get along in the world of modern air travel.
Their instructor was a slim young woman with dark hair and a narrow face whose work attire was presently masked by the uniform of a United Varig flight attendant. United Varig, of course, paid for the privilege of having its corporate logo so prominently displayed in an institute of learning. The nins didn't seem to mind. They were too busy trying out recommended travel phrases on one another.
"Keep practicing those short conversational routines," Alicia Tavares ordered them. "There'll be an oral quiz tomorrow." Groans rose from the well-dressed junior citizens. This was not a poor school district, Cardenas reflected. In the urb where he grew up, schools had no money for such frivolities as clothing masks.
"Can I help you?" She caught the flash of his ident. "Oh dear, I hope no one's in trouble. That business with the ice cream truck-"
"Has nothing to do with my visit here today," he finished for her. When he smiled, the tips of his drooping mustache rose half a centimeter. The action invariably brought a grin to the lips of anyone near enough to note the phenomenon, and Tavares was no exception.
"I'm relieved to hear it. What can I do for you"-she eyed the ident one more time-"Inspector?"
"This month you're supervising a student named Katla Anderson."
Tavares nodded, and her expression changed to one of concern.
"She's not in any trouble, is she?"
"We don't know yet. If she is, it's not of her doing." He looked past the teacher, to the busy class of well-fed children. "She's not here today."
"No."
"You don't seem surprised."
She eyed him inquisitively. "You're very perceptive, Inspector. Katla's quite a bright girl. In some respects, brilliant. But she has a real problem keeping up her attendance. It's not her parents' fault, as near as I can tell. But there are days when she just doesn't show up. Her parents protest, and claim to have spoken to her about the problem, but it persists. Really a shame. Such a clever girl."
"Her parents didn't call in to say she'd be held out today?"
Tavares shook her head. "As far as I know, there's been no communication. These unexcused absences are random, so I don't think Katla's skipping to partake of some scheduled outside activity."
Cardenas nodded. "How does she get along with her fellow nins?"
"Well enough." Having replied reflexively, the teacher proceeded to qualify her response. "Although when not engaged in programmed activities, I have noticed that she does tend to keep to herself. Why don't you ask some of her sochemates?" Turning, she addressed two girls who were exploring trays of simulated food. "Malaga, Rose- could you come here a minute, please?"
Cardenas found himself looking down at two twelve-year-olds, one the color of coffee, the other of sand. He smiled, and his mustache danced. Eyeing him curiously, the lighter-colored of the pair glanced up at her teacher. "This isn't something that's going to be on the quiz, is it?"
"No," Cardenas assured her. "I just want to ask you about a friend of yours-Katla Anderson."
The other girl replied first. "You mean the goofac?" She giggled.
"That's what we call her. Because she sucks up everything around her, but when you ask her a question, half the time all you get back is this weird smile, like she knows the answer but isn't sure how to tell it to you."
"That's right," added the first girl quickly, her words threatening to stumble over one another in the style of speaking common to twelve-year-olds. "Katla, si, she's muy cerebro, but she's still a weird. Cabeza vareza, you verdad?"
Tavares made a face. "Malaga, mind your manners."
The girl looked up petulantly. "Hoy, the fedoco asked!"
"I don't care." The sandy-skinned girl was nearly as tall as he. "Katla's not here today."
"Noho," her friend agreed indifferently. "Shunted, you sabe?"
"You know where she might be?" Cardenas asked easily.
The girls glanced at one another before the taller one responded. "Nobody knows where the west wind goes. That's Katla."
He smiled softly, his words gentle. "You're lying to me, Malaga."
She looked at him sharply. "No I'm not. Some days, Katla just doesn't image-in."
"That's not what I asked." He leaned a little closer, his eyes boring into hers. "You know what I asked. And you know that I know that you're lying. Por favor, don't lie to me again, Malaga."
The girl looked to her friend for help. They were silent for a long minute. Then the one called Rose spoke up, though with obvious reluctance. She did not meet the visitor's gaze. "Katla's hard to talk to, sometimes. It's not like she's rude: just quiet. But sometimes- sometimes she'll tell us where she's been when she's not here." The not-quite-woman's voice had fallen to a whisper, as if she was afraid someone not present might somehow overhear the conversation.
"She likes to focus with the crazyboys."
Cardenas exhaled softly. "Katla Anderson is twelve. That's too young to be focusing with the ninlocos. They would laugh her off. She'd slow their pulse."
Malaga was shaking her head. "Not the subgrubs. They'll take you if you're eleven." Aware that she might have divulged too much forbidden knowledge, she added hastily, "That's what I induct, anyway."
The Inspector straightened. Subgrubs were loose, casual groupings of antisocs not yet old enough to be initiated into a real gang. Despite what the girl had told him, he had never encountered or heard of one as young as eleven being admitted to the clique. But twelve-at twelve you would be tolerated. Thirteen to fourteen was the average age of a subgrub, after which you moved on up to a real ninloco gang, went cleanie-or ended up solo on the Strip. Or dead.
Subgrubings were fluid bands of mature children and immature teens with no real structure or organization. Unlike the ninloco gangs, members owed allegiance only to one another. Bonds were formed through friendship and dissolved as casually as they were begun. Serious crimes were rarely perpetrated by the kids involved. Most turned to antisoc activities out of boredom, not conviction. They were delinquents rather than felons.
It was a good time to catch them out, before their lives started spiraling down the toilet. Especially a bright, apparently promising kid like the Anderson girl.
Drawing his spinner, Cardenas requested the names of all the known subgrub factions reported to swirl within a ten-kim radius of the school. Beyond that, a twelve-year-old would start to find herself in alien territory. "Gobreski," he recited aloud as the names appeared on the screen. "Narulas. Pinks, Habaneros, Terravillas. The Lost Perros. Vetevenga. Socratease. Convirgil."
"Vetevenga," murmured Rose. "That's the one. I don't know where they focus."
"There's something else." Cardenas shifted his attention to the taller girl.
"She-Katla mentioned the name of one antisoc a lot. A boy." Rose shot her friend a warning look that was ignored. "Como's himself 'Wild Whoh.' I-we-met him once or twice. He was never enrolled here, but they let him audit a few classes. Whenever he was here, he and Katla would hub." Raising one hand above her head, she held it out, palm facing down. "About this tall, kind of skinny. Short green hair, usually. Crossoed querymark shaved into the right side. One time I remember him saying he was fifteen-but I think he was boasting. Afranglo skin and features." She touched her left ear. "Always wearing a muse when he wasn't in session. Passing out nodes like some bigtime Noburu-san."
"They were a good match," a still-hesitant Rose added. "He was even weirder than Katla."
The Inspector recorded the info. "You've both been very helpful. Thank you." He turned to go.
A hand clutched tentatively at his sleeve. It was Malaga, for the first time looking very childlike. "Katla-she's okay, isn't she?"
"I hope so. I like to think so. If she should happen to focus anywhere around here, would you let me know? My name is Inspector Cardenas." He did not have to provide a number. How to deal with and make use of the authorities was one of the first things children learned in soche.
It was clouding up when he left the school. More monsoon weather, he reflected. More rain. It would untidy his day, but he didn't mind. Only a mental objected to rain in the desert, irrespective of how much purified desal they extracted and pumped north from the shallows of the Golfo.
Antisocs tended to lead largely nocturnal lives. Subgrubs were no exception. Calling in his intentions via vorec, he headed not for the office but for home. If he was going to chase grubs all night, it would behoove him to take a nap.