Montezuma Strip

by Alan Dean Foster

  Don’t miscomprende; I love my siblings. But a BTS wouldn’t be caught dead tending no kids.

  No, first thing, I went looking for Lita. She’s no vit star beauty, my Lita, but she’s easy on the eyes, and kissing her is like chug-a-lugging a half liter of salsa. More important, she likes me. Actually, I think maybe she loves me, but I’m careful not to wade in those waters.

  “Hey ‘Stebo, when they let you out!” Then she throws herself in my arms, which is hard for me to handle ‘cause she’s bigger than me and it would look bad for me to stagger, comprende? We talk, and go cruise the Pershing Villa Mall, and I buy her dinner, and we talk some more, until the moon is startin’ to work on the second half of its shift. Then when things are all nice and warm and settled we waft on down to Ostras Beach for a little Californico Sur body surfing, you know what I mean? Just beach; no agua. After those months in Rehab I was more than ready for a little slip ‘n slide.

  Later we lie on our backs on the sand thinking how nice it was of God to make the moon pretty as well as functional.

  While Lita talks I lie there all tired and warm-worn an’ let her voice run all over me like saguaro honey. The words I try to ignore.

  “You gonna get a good job, ‘Stebo. Make some honest money. You so smart; I know you can do it.”

  I listen to this with my ears and my eyes, but my mind is someplace else. See, Lita, she likes me a lot, and I think she wants to get married and have a house and kids and all that cleanie stuff. But me, I don’ want that. What do I want a couple rugrats hanging on me all the time? I argue with her, and then I just give up and nod. It’s easier that way, man, and it makes her happy.

  We find another wave, and paddle like mad, an’ this time I wait for her.

  Next morning she’s all smiles an’ winks when she goes off to her crummy job and I relax ‘cause I can forget about the otra. ‘Til next time. I mean, I’m a BTS, man. I don’ need no family mucking my business.

  But as the hot days pass she keeps buggin’ me, so I start thinking about it serious. Until Chuy come looking for me, and I explain to Lita that I got to go with him. My friend needs me. And just like I’m afraid she will, sure enough she starts crying and yelling.

  “What kind of friend can you make in Rehab, you dumb schmuckito? You don’t need to be hanging with no ninlocos! This Chuy guy, he’s gonna get you screwed all over again and then what am I gonna do?”

  She’s really makin’ rain, so I try to comfort her and reassure her, explain that Chuy’s no ninloco, he’s smarter than that, smart enough not to get involved with no street gang. Maybe he’s an antisoc, but what’s the big deal with that? Half the people in the Strip are antisocs. At least he ain’t no weird. But she pulls away from me and tells me to get out, go on, get lost, I ain’t gonna amount to nothing because of the people I hang with. I know she’ll get over it, she always does, but it’s hard, ‘cause see, I really like her. Deep.

  Chuy takes me in this old car that he drives around in even though he could buy a Shogunner because, he explains, the federales would start hanging right with a young guy in a Shogunner, spizzing him and making him crazy, and while this heap may not look so good, it’s a hell of a lot more sophic. It’s late, and we head for the back of the docks, where the light induction assembly yards are.

  They’re big, the induction yards. Container and cargo ships from all over the Pacif off-load their cargoes there. Carriers from Old Nippon, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and China swap components and chippies and assembly packs and wafers and take on finished goods, cables and connectors, and agriblocks for transport home.

  The containers slide right off the ships onto flexible maglev loading arms. You’ve seen ‘em: big stelacrete and fiber-composite tentacles, four to an operator’s cabin. The containers are already content and destination-coded and those macho operators, the real good ones, can toss ten-ton containers around like square baseballs.

  Most of them end up in the distribution yards, waiting for a slot out. The yard ‘puters stack them into trains for redundancy value and when they’ve got enough headed in more or less the same direction, they send them off north to San Juana or Agua Pri or Yumarado or Elpaso or the Navahopi nation. The already assembled, finished goods that come pan-Pacif go straight to Frisco or LaLa.

  The Bay and Ensenada City are the harvest ground for the whole western two thirds of the Strip. All those fancy vits and consumer electronics the cleanies hunger for are assembled in the Strip, using Strip cheapa labor and Zonie engineering. It’s a helluva place. Mi madre’s job is up there. She does okay considering my stinkin’ run-off pendejo of an old man never sends no money to her. Okay, yeah; but she has to work like a dog. Ten people waiting to get her job.

  We pull into one of the big public cleanie commutee lots and start to cruise, slow and easy. Chuy knows where he’s going, I can tell, and the closer we get to where he’s going the quieter he gets. Maybe his mouth’s shut, but his eyes are moving all the time. Bright black eyes, like dancing ball bearings. He’s real serioso now and so I keep quiet, trying to watch for I don’ know what.

  Then this little smile spreads over his face. If I forget everything else about him I’ll always remember that smile, like a guy on a date who’s spent a lot of money and has worked real hard to sound sincere and has just figured out he’s gonna get laid. He pulls over next to a nice, shiny Sodan coupe, maybe a year old. I flash the two guys in the front seat, one a slant and the other a big blond anglo who don’ look like he belongs within a hundred kims of the place. They’re flashing me back like they’re trying to swim the Golfo from Guyamas to San Blas and I’m a weight tied to their ankles.

  The anglo looks unhappy. I keep my expression carefully neutral, but I already hate him for his good looks. “Modal, Chuy. Who’s the buffo?” I stiffen but say nothing.

  “Take it easy. We hung in Rehab together.”

  The other two relax a little. So do I. “Oh. I guess that’s okay, then.” He sneers at me. “What can you do besides make goofy expressions, buffo?”

  Before I can reply Chuy steps in. “He’s mode. I think he’s a tweek.”

  The Sodan drivers exchange a look. It’s clear this they don’ expect. I’m inordinately pleased.

  “We don’t need no stinkin’ tweek,” the slant mutters.

  “Just because we never had one before don’t mean we can’t use one,” Chuy tells him. I can tell he’s getting irritated. So can the slant, because he doesn’t say anything else. Chuy climbs out, locks his boost-a-wreck. I notice it’s got a cute little peapod gelplug under the ignition that’ll blow the fingers off anybody dumb enough to try and skrag it. I imitate his withdrawal. We pile into the Sodan.

  I check out the interior, note the origin stains: stupid, easily bypassed dash security; elaborate satellite mapping system above the CD player, revolving token holder for the toll highways. I refract this ain’t the anglo’s cruiser, and I say so.

  “Where’d you skrag this gordo, goldilocks?”

  The anglo looks angro for a second, then nods in grudging approval. “Not around here. You think I’m a buffo like you?”

  “Naw,” I reply, displaying a bravado I don’t feel. The anglo is twice my size, stuffed full of steroid-rich cereal. “I think you’re a buffo like yourself.”

  It’s his turn to stiffen, but it’s hard to unload on somebody when you’re in the front seat and they’re in the back. Then he grins and extends a hand back toward me. The palm is soft, like a vitwit’s.

  “I’m Kilbee. You know? Like the killer bees?”

  From behind the half wheel on the driver’s side the slant sniffs. “It’s really Kirby, but you know these anglos. Delusions of grandeur. I’m Huong. Long Huong to my lady friends.”

  “In what faevela?” I shoot back, and just like that I’m one of the pak, no longer an outsider. Huong starts the Sodan and the big reviviscent electric motor purrs like a telenovela tart wound too tight. We ease out of the lot, heading toward the main induction distribution
yard on the eastern fringe of the Arcomplex. I’ve already got it figured, but Chuy explains anyway.

  “Don’t like to leave our real transportation too close to our place of business.” He’s smiling, but tense now. Getting close to work time, I figure.

  We pull up to the deserted four-lane gate. Faking a high, Huong weaves as he sticks a card into a read-only. While we wait nobody says anything. A moment later the reo regurgitates his card and the gate pops sweet as an electric cherry. I see them all relax.

  “Card cost a lot of money,” Chuy tells me as we roll in. “Kilbee got it in LaLa.”

  “My folks are never home,” the anglo explains. “Took me weeks to set up delivery.”

  “Where do they think you are, your folks?”

  “Studying business at UC Escondido. They’re out of town so much they could know less. Much less care.” His expression was not fraught with filial love.

  We pull as far into the lot as possible and Huong parks next to half a dozen empty vehics. Kilbee reaches under his seat and extracts a big package. He opens the top and hands me a soft lump.

  “Left side, near the bottom,” Chuy elucidates as he slides to his right. “You can find it with your fingers. Be ready to slip out as it expands.”

  I eye the lump, find the switch. “You’re kidding. What the hell’s this?”

  Chuy gestures to his left, toward a steel tower on the far side of the lot. “Spy vit up there, covers the whole tarmac. It’ll show at least two people in this car. Have to be two here at all times. Probably don’t need it, but I don’t like to take chances if there’s a better way.”

  “Ready, it’s swinging.” Huong is looking casually to his left. “Now!”

  I flip the switch I’ve been fingering. The lump hisses like a dreaming gila monster and starts to bloat. I frantically follow Chuy as he scrambles out the right side of the coupe and onto the pavement. Behind me, a pair of inflatable drunks expand to fill my seat and Huong’s. They are extremely good likenesses. By the time the spy vit swings back past the Sodan they will be blown up to human size and occupying their seats. I can’t repress a grin.

  “Who thought this one up?”

  “I did,” said Chuy. “Got the idea off a vit. Hasn’t failed so far. It’s a redundancy, in case anyone at central security happened to have noticed us pulling in and gave a damn. This way it’ll look like a couple of cleanies using the safe confines of the lot to sleep off a binge. Come on, and stay low. Not everything in here’s auto. They have regular patrols, too.”

  As the camera swung back again, patient and ignorant, we scrambled toward the yard.

  Hundreds of induction container cars rested on surface tracks, a labyrinth of composite stelacrete, plastic, composite fibers, and metal. Chuy and the others seemed to know pretty much where they were going, though they stopped once to confer. I just tried to keep up and out of the way, watching and learning. At the north end of the yard the network converged into the heavy-use lines that ran toward the Strip. All around us was the constant hum of cars moving, disengaging, assembling into trains or breaking away, the sounds of maglev rails being switched on and off, clicks and buzzes, and pungent above it all the sweet jumbled stink of lubrication and ozone. I felt as if I’d stepped over a gap and fallen into a machine, wayward as a free electron.

  We stopped outside a wall of six connected cars pointed north. Chuy kept watch while Huong and Kilbee plugged a battered notex into the access slot on the loading door and sped through combinations at twenty a second. I tried to look alert.

  “How you know which car to pick?”

  “Got to be one headed north. That’s the easy part. The rest is experience, practice. Also, I got contacts. Tricky business.” I was shuffling nervously back and forth and he indicated my feet. “Watch your step.”

  I knew what he was referring to. The center rail, where the exposed conducting magnets ran the length of the track, was fully charged. If I stumbled into it, made the slightest contact with it while it was pos, I’d be a long pig taco faster than tequila evaporates downtown on a national holiday.

  The container cars sat on their track, vibrating infinitesimally as they awaited orders to move. The damn door finally clicked open. Chuy rose up and stepped back. “Move it, hombers!”

  Huong and Kilbee disappeared within. Moments later they were tossing out long, flat rectangular boxes no thicker than slats. They were made of opaque molycite, carefully labeled. I didn’t waste time trying to read them. When Chuy and I each had one the intruding pair descended and we started running, fast and low, back to the lot.

  Once there we waited, timing our rush to the Sodan. When Chuy gave the word we moved, into the coupe, deflating the balloon drunks and replacing them with our own selves. Huong drove sedately out of the lot.

  At the city lot we abandoned the stolen coupe for Chuy’s beat-up Mord. Only when we were back on a main street in town did the boys start whooping and hollering, exchanging raps and cries.

  “Let’s see what we got,” said Chuy. He took a prier from a slim toolbox stored under the front seat and started working on the molycite carton. The lid slid off smoothly and we saw that it was full of densely packed NISC optical leads. As were the other three slats. The last one we cracked contained doublet Mahatmas, gold-sealed and ready to install, each worth sixty Namerican dollars apiece wholesale underground according to Huong. There were fifty leads in the slat.

  “What do you think, ‘Stebo?” Chuy was beaming. “Not bad for a couple hours running around in the dark, eh? Better than snorting desdu, and safer.”

  “You did okay, buffo,” said Kilbee grudgingly.

  “Thanks. Then stop calling me buffo, okay?”

  For the second time that night a big hand reached back over the seat.

  It went like that week after week. We were doing pretty damn good. One night in July, when it was too hot even for the spy vit to move very fast, we skragged a whole box of custom-augmented lumin plates. Twenty-five of ‘em, a thousand dollars a plate. Huong got so boned we had to pass him around three different moray holes just to get him hosed down.

  But we each could’ve packed out a box. It bothered me. I thought I knew what the problem was, but I waited ‘til I was sure before pushing it on Chuy. I was doing a lot of thinking since I’d been accepted into the troop, and I wanted to be positive.

  “Yeah, we coulda taken four boxes,” he told me over a couple of self-chilling Cabos at his place. It was out on the Point, in an expensive neighborhood, but not too flamboyant, if you know what I mean. Not right on the Pacif, but you could see it from his rooftop. Chuy himself, he never used the sundeck. That was for crazy anglos who wanted to get as dark as the people they were always railing against.

  “Then why didn’t we?” I asked him. Looking out the second-floor window I could see Huong and Kilbee down in the compact high-walled garden-yard, sitting under the misters with a couple of girls they’d picked up outside the International School of Management. Huong’s lady looked like she was from Finland or something. Her skin was as pale as underwear on washday. The slant was partial to tall Europeans. Kilbee wasn’t partial at all, so long as they had a waist. Friggin’ equal-op employer.

  “Because of the way the yard security’s set up. We’re like mosquites, ‘Stebo. You draw a little blood here, a little there, your target gets up irritated but not furious. You take too much at one time, you get squashed.” He slugged cold Cabo. “I seen it happen. Compadre of mine, Esquivel Figuerito, borrowed a six-wheel sloader. Slipped into the yard and filled it up with twelve crates of Miashi and Davidano thrummo components, real class noise-makers, that he took off a container from Surabaya. Skrag weighed about two hundred kilos, I guess. They busted him before he was halfway to the barrier.”

  “How?”

  “Mierde, homber, those induction containers derop around on magnetic fields, right? So the weight of each container is checked and double-checked and recorded when it’s offloaded from a ship, and the weight goes
into the monitoring ‘puters along with the rest of the stats. Yard Security Central has a mass-weight record of every container as soon as it comes off the ship from whatever Slantland it calls home. They’re monitored twenty-four hours a day. A container’s weight suddenly drops, even a little, and it sets off an alarm in Security that records the amount of weight loss even as it’s identifying the specific container. The yardeyes swarm that container on foot and speedbikes so fast you don’t have time to sneeze. Nobody gets out.

  “That’s why we never skrag more than twenty kilos of anything. It allows us about a ten-kilo margin and we don’t go over one decagram. Never. That’s why I never been caught since I developed this little game. We take too little to miss. Sometimes we don’t get much. A couple hundred. You seen it, you been in on it. But it’s a gamble every time. I’d rather mess a guess and suffer a few sterile nights than end up busted and back in Hermosillo, or worse. Haven’t been lucky. Just been careful.

  “Other guys, they get too greedy. We take just a little at a time. Sometimes we don’t get nothing. It’s a tradeoff.”

  I nodded. “I been thinking, Chuy.”

  “’Bout what, amigo?”

  I sipped at my beer. “What if we could get around the weight problem somehow?”

  Chuy frowned. “Don’t get no funny ideas, homber. We do it my way or not at all. You want to freelance?”

  “No, no. I’m as reticent as you. But what if, like, what if I thought of a way where we could vacuum not a few kilos of compo, but a lot more. More than two hundred kilos. A whole container. How much could that be worth?”

  Chuy belched, then blinked. “A whole car? Man, you crazy.”

  “Maybe, but I don’ mind bein’ rich an’ crazy.”

  Chuy chuckled. “If my guy can’t make two hundred kilos, a smart like him, how you gonna take a whole car? You’ll set off every alarm in every induction security station between San Juana and La Paz.”