“What do you mean?”
“Well, he didn’t use the TV scan, and if I hadn’t been sure it was his voice I wouldn’t have believed it was Billy.” She shook her head. “He sounded so beaten, somehow. He said he had to talk fast, he couldn’t hang on, but to tell you he was nailed good, couldn’t even try to contact you for the time being. I asked him what was the trouble and he said there wasn’t any trouble, exactly, but that he was under close surveillance and couldn’t try to reach you until he could figure out how to shake it. I … I told him to call you anyway, I thought you should talk to him direct, but he said he couldn’t, or didn’t care, or something. And that was all, he just hung up.”
“He didn’t say what kind of surveillance?”
“No … but Doc, I’m worried. He sounded very tense and shaky, not at all like himself. He said he was just shaken up by the arrest and hadn’t had any sleep, but it all sounded so wrong.”
Doc chewed his lip for a moment. “Well, we’ll have to cancel the case for tonight obviously. That’s no problem, but Billy is. I don’t like to have to do it, but I think I’d better go find him.”
“You mean go to his place? Doc, do you think that’s wise? I mean, if he’s really being watched — ”
“That’s a risk I’ve got to take, I’m afraid. If he’s in trouble, I’ve got to try to help. He hasn’t got anyone else to turn to. But don’t worry, it won’t be the first time I’ve run a risk in this dirty business.”
“Then let me go with you.”
“Not this time. It’s possible that something could explode very suddenly, with me and Billy both nailed. The farther you stay away from us right now, the better, as far as I can see.”
“Then will you call me after you see him?”
Doc paused and looked at her. “You really are worried, aren’t you?” he said.
“Well … yes.” Molly looked flustered. “I mean, he’s certainly been loyal, and, well, you get used to a person. And sometimes he surprises you. Look how he handled that anesthesia last night! You couldn’t have done it better yourself. I know he sometimes makes you mad, he acts so dumb, but he really isn’t. Sometimes I think you’re too hard on him, you’re always riding him.”
“But he comes right back for more, you notice.”
“But that doesn’t mean he likes it.”
“Well, I’m not so sure of that, either. But I can’t very well ride him unless I can make contact with him. Yes, I’ll call you when I know what’s going on.”
Molly went on her way, and Doc sat back in his chair again for a few moments, staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his neck. Then, with an air of decision, he stood up, took hat and coat from the rack, and pushed the OUT switch on his call board control. Snapping off the office light, he headed quickly for the down elevators.
VIII
Outside the hospital it was snowing steadily and heavily, limiting visibility to a few dozen feet; passersby emerged from the gloom like specters and vanished again like flocculated shadows. Already the automatic street-warmers were hard at work, filling the streets with billows of clammy humid air, like the inside of a greenhouse on a sunny day, as the snow underfoot melted into rivulets in the gutters. The windy gusts of snow on Doc’s face and the warm damp rising from the street created an unsettling contrast, as though neither of the conditions was to be fully believed. Doc pulled his hat down, rolled up his coat collar, and wrapped the wool muffler more tightly around his neck. It couldn’t be better, he thought, if Billy’s flat were really under close surveillance. Neither he nor anyone else could be identified at any distance greater than ten feet, and any attempt at photography would be completely aborted, as long as the snow continued.
He hailed a ground-cab just outside the Hospital, and gave the driver Billy’s Lower City address. Then he settled back in the cab as the driver pulled out into traffic. There was a risk involved in the trip, Doc knew that perfectly well. If Billy were really under close surveillance, it might be virtually impossible to conceal Doc’s visit from the multiplicity of sensing devices that could be pressed into use. The falling snow might thwart camera-snooping, or even interfere with infra-red scopes, but audio pickups were a different matter. Modern parabolic microphones could pick up a whisper from a distance of three hundred yards, if necessary, when there was no barrier impeding the sound waves, and a laser beam bounced off a closed window could easily sense the vibrations caused by low voices within the room. Other, even more sophisticated, devices were available to the police. And as for identification of any voices picked up, anyone who had ever given testimony to a computer-court — and who hadn’t? — automatically had a voice print recorded and registered with both the FBI and the Department of Health Control. Even a brief fragment of snooped conversation could be enough to permit positive identification, enough to connect Doc with Billy Gimp in any tribunal in the land.
Yet oddly enough, Doc found that at this particular moment in space and time, he simply didn’t care. For years he had played the underground medicine game with painstaking attention to the unwritten rules, always wary, always taking the most elaborate precautions to avoid apprehension, to cover his tracks, to be on guard against any possible surveillance. But now, to his own surprise, he felt strangely indifferent about his own security and safety. With the events of the past twenty-four hours, the shock of Billy’s arrest, and the finality of his own confrontation with Katie Durham, something seemed to have changed. It was as though his own fate were already decided, out of his hands despite anything he might do. It was Billy that needed help and protection now, not Doc, and if helping Billy meant throwing caution to the winds, then caution would have to be thrown to the winds — and strangely, the prospect suddenly did not seem the least alarming.
The cab threaded its way down from the Upper City, down ramps and causeways to the ever-narrower streets below. At the same time, it made its way northward, the driver moving swiftly from light to light. Doc sat back, curbing his impatience as mile upon mile of the Lower City passed by. Then abruptly the cab slowed, poked along a dark and snow-filled street, then turned a corner. “This is about it, I think,” the driver said. “Okay?”
Doc peered out the window of the cab. “Is this Four Hundred and Twenty-third?”
“It’s a block north, but this is as close as I can get. Some of these streets are falling in.”
“Okay.” Doc paid the cabbie and a moment later was on the curb as the cab swished away in the snow. He pulled his collar up and stared around at the gloom. There were no street-warmers here in the Lower City, and where the snow had filtered down it now lay in foot-deep piles, already grimy from the city’s air. With the cab gone, Doc walked a block north to 423rd, turned down the dimly lit street, and walked briskly east. He had been to Billy’s place only once, years before, when he had been checking him out as a prospective bladerunner. Now he remembered only the direction as he passed block after block of eight-story tenement rowhouses, their façades black in the darkness, their stoops and curbs piled high with refuse. Six blocks along he made a turn, recognizing the small corner grocery that marked Billy’s street. A moment later he stopped as the small signal-sensor in his pocket bell-boy began emitting a slow, steady succession of warning clicks. Doc frowned. From somewhere nearby in this heap of slum buildings, something was transmitting a steady stream of short-wave signals. The clicks continued as he walked on, found the right building, and walked up the cluttered steps to the entry hall.
Once inside, Doc paused. None of the buzzers bore names, and the old TV monitor screen was smashed as though someone had put a brick through it. Doc pushed the buzzer he thought was the right one. Then, when no voice signal came, he trudged up six flights of stairs and thumped on a heavy door.
Something stirred inside. A muffled voice said, “Who’s there?”
“Me,” Doc said. “Look under the door.” He tore a page from his pocket notebook, scribbled on it, and slipped it halfway under the door. It vanished,
and a few seconds later he heard bars and chains being released. The door opened a crack and he saw Billy’s eye peering out.
“Jeez,” Billy said, opening the door. “You had me worried. I wasn’t expecting company.” As Doc started to answer, Billy held up a warning finger. “Don’t talk. This place may be wired up for voice prints. Let me get my coat, I know a place we can go.”
Moments later Billy emerged, bundled up to the ears in his corduroy coat and a thick wool muffler. Silently he led Doc down the stairs to the street again. It seemed colder than before, and a cutting wind had come up, drifting snow and sending clouds of it whirling down the dark street ahead of them. Doc walked briskly, with Billy hobbling along beside him. Two blocks up the street they came to a dingy basement restaurant with a flickering neon beer sign in the window. The place was completely deserted except for a waitress reading a love novel behind the counter. Billy led Doc to a table near the back in a dimly lit corner. There he sat down and loosened his muffler, his teeth literally chattering even though the place was warm and steamy. “Doc, you shouldn’t have come. I don’t know who may be watching me … didn’t Molly tell you?”
“She told me you were under some kind of surveillance, yes. But what did you expect me to do? Sit around twiddling my thumbs until you got ready to tell me what’s going on? I’ve got work to do, patients to see — ” Doc broke off, looking around the grimy restaurant. “Can we get a privacy screen?”
Billy shook his head. “No such thing down here. And if they did have one, we couldn’t use it anyway. We’d have the cops in here inside of ten minutes.”
Doc looked closely at Billy. “Why? Just what is going on?”
Billy rolled up his sleeve, revealing the transponder unit clamped to his wrist. “I picked up this little toy when they hauled me in last night.”
“Oh, oh.” Doc examined the device. “Isn’t this one of those constant-signal transmitters?”
“Right.”
“An electronic shadowing device.”
“Right again. There’s a grid pattern of receivers built into the telephone lines and laser conduits all over the city. Any place I go, the grid pattern reports my coordinates, minute by minute, as I move from one grid to the next. There’s no audio or visual pickup, but there doesn’t need to be. Any change from a perfectly smooth pickup pattern on the grid, and an alert goes out to the nearest precinct station, and they can have a helicopter on me in minutes. They can also retrace every place I go, every place, for court evidence later. They’ve got me boxed in tight; I can’t make a move that they don’t know about if they want to know about it.”
“I know,” Doc said glumly. “Legally it’s considered equivalent to imprisonment. But I thought it had to be court-ordered and court-regulated. How did they manage to hang one on you?”
“Computer-court. They nailed me with a misdeameanor charge, illegal possession of surgical supplies. Then they had the court rigged so that I got hung with the transponder whether I accepted the computer-court guilty verdict or appealed it pending a jury trial. In fact, it seemed to me that what they really wanted was to get this transponder on me, one way or another, regardless of any particular charges. Well, they worked it, all right. This thing’s on me legally, and the minute it stops signaling for any reason whatever, there’ll be a squad car or chopper homing in on the spot where the signal quit.”
Doc frowned and looked more closely at the gadget. “What would happen if you just cut it off and then took a heli-cab to the other side of the city before they could close in?”
Billy shook his head. “I’m not that crazy. There’s a mandatory five years for transponder-jumping, it’s the equivalent of a jailbreak. Of course I might get away before they nailed me, but they’d get me sooner or later. And anyway, why should I take the risk? It sure wouldn’t do me any good — I’d just have to go underground and stay there — and it wouldn’t do you any good, either. You’d just have to get another bladerunner, you wouldn’t dare have me around.”
“Well, you’re not much use dragging that thing around on your wrist, either,” Doc said, “leaving a blazed trail every place you go.”
“So what am I supposed to do about it?” Billy flared. “You act like you’ve got some kind of problem. Well, I’m the one with the problem.”
“Okay, okay, neither one of us likes it,” Doc said. “The question is what we can do about it. There must be something. Now quiet down and tell me everything that happened last night. Maybe we can think of something.”
Billy told him everything, from the moment Doc’s heli-cab had taken off from the rooftop until the moment he had appeared at Billy’s door — the Health Control interrogation, the computer-court hearing, his release with the transponder, everything. He paused as the waitress came up to take their orders, soy steak for Doc, a bowl of soup for Billy, and then continued. “So with this thing on my wrist, there wasn’t much I could do,” he concluded. “I went home and holed up, slept awhile, and then worked up nerve enough to go out and use a phone. I didn’t dare use my own — it looked like they’d pulled the audio-visual bug out of my room, but there was no way I could be sure without a lot of testing devices that I don’t have.”
Doc scratched his chin. “Wouldn’t be any problem to get help there. As a matter of fact — ”
“Doc, what I don’t see is why they were so eager to get this transponder on me in the first place. Have they been bothering you too?”
“In a way, yes. They’re going after it differently, but I think it’s me they’re after in the long run. Just how they connect me with you I don’t know — I’m not even sure they do — but as long as you’ve got that thing broadcasting on your wrist, we’re both vulnerable. Somehow we’ve got to get it shut off without getting you into trouble.”
“Fine. But how?”
“There’s a computer man at the hospital owes me a favor,” Doc said. “Jerry Kosinski. We fixed his kid’s broken leg last year, remember?”
“Little guy with glasses? Yeah.”
“He knows more about surveillance systems than anybody else I can think of. At least he could check out your room for you, and maybe do something about the transponder too. You go ahead and eat; I’ll make a call from the corner.”
A few moments later Doc was back. “Got him, and he’ll meet us. Your room, as soon as he can get there. We’d better get along.” He finished his steak, saw that Billy’s soup was untouched. “What’s the matter, you sick?”
“Just not hungry,” Billy said, pushing the soup away. “Let’s get out of here.”
Back in his room Billy emptied a chair for Doc to sit down in and made a pot of coffee. They waited in silence as an hour passed, then another. Doc dozed, his head on his chest; Billy paced, pausing now and then to peer down at the street below through the steamy window. At last there was a rap on the door, and Billy let the little computer man in.
Jerry Kosinski nodded to Doc, shook hands with Billy, and set a small black valise on the floor. “Sorry to take so long,” he said. “The snow has slowed traffic all over.” He wiped steam from his glasses and peered around the room. “So you’re having trouble with bugs, eh?”
“You might say so,” Doc said. “We’re not sure about the room, but there’s no question about the bracelet the boy’s wearing.”
“Well, let’s take the room first. You said there was a matchstick receiver installed here two days ago that’s gone now, right? Where was it?”
Billy showed him the tiny hole in the floorboard where the bug had been. With flashlight in hand the little man went over the whole room, whistling through his teeth as he peered and probed. One by one he pulled testing instruments from the valise, completely absorbed in his task. He paid special attention to the telephone and computer console, at one point making an outside call and waiting for a call-back. Finally he sighed and looked at Billy. “If there’s anything in this room that’s bugged right now, I can’t spot it. I think you’re clean.”
Billy t
ook a deep breath and sat down on the bed. “That’s good news,” he said finally. “Now if there were just some way to shake this bracelet — ”
“Let’s have a look,” Kosinski said. He studied the transponder closely, took some intruments from the valise, fiddled with dials. “Well, it’s a standard police transponder,” he said at length. “You don’t dare try to take it off, or tamper with it, but we can certainly spoof it.”
“Spoof it?”
“Fix it so it doesn’t tell them anything.” The engineer dug in his bag again and laid two devices out on the table. One looked almost identical to Billy’s transponder, the other like a woman’s hairnet made of fine silvery wire. “The idea is to set up a phony signal that they can’t distinguish from the real one, and then block the real signal so they think the phony signal is valid. This gadget here is just another transmitter like the one on your wrist. We’ll tune it to transmit exactly the same signal as your bracelet. Once I start it, we’ll just lay it on your dresser here and leave it. It’ll keep broadcasting for at least two months on the power pack that’s attached. Meanwhile, we’ll muffle your bracelet with this wire net gadget here. It’s very similar to the old-fashioned Farraday cages they used to use for privacy screens, but it’s much smaller. It does the same thing, though — it keeps signals from going through. Once it’s on, you can go any place you want and they can’t follow you. Now let’s get this set.”
For several minutes Kosinski worked with the phony transponder, adjusting it, checking a tuning dial, then readjusting it. “Now hold out your wrist.” He made a final adjustment and pressed a stud on the phony transponder. Quickly, then, he wrapped the wire mesh around Billy’s wrist transponder and anchored it in place with a couple of laces. “There,” he said. “You’ll have to be sure that stays on, but as long as it does, the police grid will be picking up the signal from the phony transmitter, not from yours.”
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