Not to worry. The prospective adopters lined up as soon as the situation was explained. I thought about putting in my own name. Yeah, I did. I wouldn’t mind having a kid, though at this stage of my life raising one would be a project. I know I could do it, though. See, I’ve been surrogate papa to plenty of street kids. The straight as well as the crooked.
It’s just that I know how hard it would be on a kid trying to grow up with an Intuit for a father. A kid’s got to be able to get away with a little fib now and then or they’ll go loco.
You’d be surprised how many people who work up and down the Strip have religion. Some of them, see, it’s all they got. Long hours, cold masters, pay that evaporates during the first trip to the allmart or the grocery channel, that can be taken from them.
But not religion. Usually it’s clean, and it helps. Like most things, I find that you get out of it what you’re willing to put into it. Religion doesn’t betray people; people betray religion. When that happens it’s the same old, old story. Money’s usually involved, or sex.
You never know, homber, how reality is going to get messed up on the Strip. I love the contrasts. An old friend who managed to retire from the force last year with most of his original limbs once said that I live for juxtaposition. Kidding, I asked him what position, and he told me without hesitating, “The juxta one, of course.” Said it without smiling. I wasn’t sure what he meant. Still ain’t.
I think it has to do with my work sort of explaining itself.
Our Lady of the Machine
I
“God had him killed because he wouldn’t pay off?”
“That’s what the widow told us.” Not a hint of a smile lightened the expression on the captain’s face. It would have seemed an alien intrusion at best. Pangborn didn’t smile very often.
Cardenas dissected what he’d been told as he gazed absently past his superior. From the office situated midway up the triangular police tower he could see a good deal of sweltering downtown Nogales and out into the Strip beyond. Interlinked kinks of assembly and design plants, the muscles of the most powerful industrial connurbation the world had ever known, gleamed fiery chrome and bronze at eventide.
The relentless southwestern sun shadowed them with red and gold patinas. An occasional clutch of desperate, huddled vegetation signifying the site of a park or sardonically set-aside riparian zone put forth a feeble green scream against the tidal waves of heat that were reflected from pavement and wall. Sinews of program roads and the tendons that were high-volume induction strips knotted the energetic coils of commerce together.
Amid such relentless mercantile fervor humans ventured fitfully from building to building, corpuscles and cells traveling via air-conditioned tubes, minuscule individual shapes vital to the continued commercial health of the aggregate organism. Thanks to the interminable inventiveness and energy of such individuals the Strip had grown to become the engine that powered a sizable chunk of the world’s GNP.
Inspector Angel Cardenas knew much of it intimately and was completely at home in its smoldering, fevered concourses, where he but rarely encountered anything or anyone truly likable.
The captain was waiting on him. Not an easily unsettled sort, he looked anxious. Cardenas cleared his throat.
“I’m not a particularly religious man, Shaun. But if I was, I think I’d find it hard to believe in a deity that stoops to common extortion.”
“Not extortion,” Pangborn corrected him dourly. “Failure to contribute to the support of the poor.”
“Ah yes. To the poor extortionists.” Cardenas’s wry grin minutely lifted the drooping points of his impressive mustache. “Do we have anything to go on besides the theological rantings of half-hysterical widows?”
“Damn poquito.” The captain shuffled through a pile of printouts on his desk like an aborigine digging for edible grubs before finally shoving a hard copy at his guest. Cardenas took it and read deliberately, his transplanted ice-blue eyes missing nothing on the tattle sheet.
“Initially there was a flurry of complaints.” Pangborn chewed on a thumbnail. “Then information dried up.”
Cardenas sniffed, wrinkling his mustache. “When the federales can’t keep citizens from being killed, the survivors tend to go noncommunico pretty quick.” He leaned forward to pass the hard copy back. “This is small squash. Local loco. Why call me in? I’m not bored.”
Pangborn considered him out of deep-set burnt-umber eyes that had pushed around plenty of bodies before they’d been relegated to pushing papers. “You’re our best Intuit, Angel. This isn’t your usual cut-and-wasted racket. It looks simple enough on the surface, but there’s something farking sophisticated going on here, and the mibble on the pave is that it’s spreading. You know how this kind of protection-extortion works; you persuade or vape a few of the doubtful and the rest soon fall in line.”
Cardenas nodded understandingly. He reached down to pet the dog that wasn’t there and caught himself halfway, wondering if the captain had noticed. “Come on, Shaun. Let’s have a little verdad here. Why pick on me?”
The captain grunted. “Graveyard shift supervisor at Mondadoroko Tools over in Nog East got a memo on his Dimail telling him that he and his blessed company weren’t doing their part to help the indigent in his district, and that God was displeased with this so they’d more or less better shape up and do their share. Fast.”
Cardenas shook his head. “Don’t know Mondadoroko Tools.”
“Precision masking division of Wurtemburg Kraftwerk GBN.”
Which explained everything, Cardenas saw. The local precinct feds would be expected to deal with moderate levels of extortion on the street level, but when small-time operators started trying to park their kismet on one of the big multinats like Wurtemburg Kraftwerk, then Regional Enforcement would be expected to start taking them seriously.
“Somebody’s getting a little big for their britches,” he commented.
Pangborn pursed his lips. “If you think you’ve got God on your side, why not try and respirate money out of the multinats? Why limit yourself to restaurant owners and chip kickers and proteinoaties?”
“They’re starting small,” Cardenas mused. “Maybe they’re not absolutely sure God’s on their side.” He shifted in the chair, trying to focus on what Pangborn wasn’t saying. “How’d our unlucky monger downslide?”
The captain looked uncomfortable. “He and his wife were solicited twice to contribute. By a cowled Collar. You know, a padre?”
“So why didn’t they?”
“They discussed it with their regular neighborhood priest. He didn’t know anything about this guy or the Order he claimed to represent. ‘Nuestra Senora de la Machina’. The priest advised them not to pay, and to call the local fed station. This they did. The padre came back twice. The third time he warned them that God was angry that they were doing so well while others were starving. They told him to waft.”
“What happened next?”
Pangborn’s tone soured. “Two days later they were locking up around eleven when according to the widow a vision appeared in the middle of their store.”
Cardenas ticked off possibilities. “Holomage projection. Static optical diffusion. Coherent-confluent VR. Something in their dinner. There are plenty of plausible explanations.”
“Sure,” the captain agreed readily. “The widow insists it was a woman clad in flowing robes, all in glowing white. The color and texture of shaded heavy cream, she said. Too soft for sculpture. It wore a sad expression. It floated over to them and rebuked them for their stinginess. Her husband declared himself unimpressed and insisted loudly that he wasn’t about to pay good money to protect himself from magic tricks. He turned to pick up the phone to call us.
“The widow says that’s when the image put a hand on her husband’s head and he collapsed.” Cardenas’s eyebrows arched. Pangborn stared back at him unflinchingly. “Coroner’s report says cardiac arrest. The guy died on the spot. His wife insisted he was heal
thy as a horse. His medical records support her.
“The image backed off, steepled its hands as if in prayer, and told the widow that while she was sorry about her husband, the needs of the poor could no longer be entrusted to the sluggish whims of mere human agencies. Then it crossed itself and disappeared. “He paused. “I’m no holofield specialist and I don’t have time to keep up with what’s new in the field, but I’ve only heard of one gizmode that could do something like that.”
“A tactile projection,” Cardenas murmured. A very small shiver tickled the base of his spine.
Pangborn nodded. “Strictly military ware, and mostly experimental. Except for one official incident, which happened to occur in our district. Which happened to involve you.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” Cardenas told him. “Have the relevant companies been queried?”
“Both GenDyne and Parabas insist they’ve barely begun to probe the secrets of the subox tunnel you encountered on that case, much less figure out how to bypass and disarm the guardian tactile systemics their late, lamented, and self-vacuumed specialists left sprinkled in their wake.”
“Then it sounds like somebody else has learned how to run and project an independent tactile. Military leak?”
The captain shook his head impatiently. “Been checked out.” This time he did smile. “First they insist they’re not working on anything like that, and then they assure you that even if they were their security’s so tight not even an engraved molecule of information about what they’re not working on could slip out.”
Cardenas sighed. “So we’re back to hypothesizing an independent Designer. Like the two who vacuumed themselves.”
“Or something else,” the captain muttered darkly. “Something new. Get out on the streets, Angel. Fave the pave. Go down into the gordo mucho and parley the mongrel mongers. Find somebody who’ll talk back. I’m busy enough as it is. I don’t need the Kraftwerks and Fordmatsus and GenDynes on my back. Nobody my age with my blood pressure deserves that.”
Cardenas rose to leave. “I’ll pray for you, Shaun.”
The beleaguered captain didn’t grin back.
II
Paily Huachuco had taken a filthy gel-glazed storefront on Twenty-third Avenue and through hard work and pave smarts turned the rat and roach palace into the modest music nest flamboyantly neoned on the outside as Musik-Niche. That had been five years ago. Now there were four garish, glitzy Musik-Niches, sited equally between Nogales del Norte and Sud. Currently Paily was negotiating for store space in the Lochiel and Cibuta malls. A flashman lawyer for a big synergainment syndicate had approached him with talk of franchising. The offer had been tempting, but the concomitant loss of control that would have accompanied it was not. Better to be an independent minimog than a high-salaried castrato.
Ten years down the road, maybe he’d think about it some more. Right now he was having too much fun.
Through the one-way polarized he could look down on the main floor of his flagship store where rapido repeaters and workers and sub-adults and ninlocos on their best behavior jostled with young execs and maskers and assemblers to peruse Musik-Niche’s unrivaled stock. Max-sensorial holovits gyrated above their heads, enticing male and female alike with tridi images of boobs and buns and bulges, and sometimes even music.
The execs and assemblers tended to scarf on preprogrammed cubes, while the store’s younger patrons were more eager to experiment. They swam through the humming establishment’s vast, daily-updated catalog of rhythms and melodies, voices and instruments, mixing their own according to the latest vogue. Everyone a composer, Huachuco mused. Everyone a singer and musician, arranger and performer. Like its competitors, Musik-Niche served up a swirling, boiling musical and visual soup from which patrons could at leisure and in comfort elutriate the bits and pieces of sound that most sweetly vitalized their senses.
Or if you preferred, one of the store’s knowledgeable wandering specialists could help you build your own custom cube. A teaspoon of reggae, half a cup of tamba, guitar, and juiced samisen to taste, bake in¾ time, stew with drums and synth, and pour when ready. Sprinkle with lyrics from Musik-Niche’s immense ROM library and you too can be a star.
Or buy premixed. That was even more profitable than the customized music in which Huachuco’s stores specialized.
His door buzzed and Cina stepped in. She was pretty and efficient and had been with him since the opening of his second store. He’d made her a vice president.
She brushed at her blond surgical transplants. “That Collar’s here to see you again, Paily. The padre?”
“Cina, I told you to deal with him yourself.” Paily indicated his desk. “I don’t have time to talk to chariters. I’m trying to pare down the margin on Hokusai’s next delivery by another quarter percent and you’d think I was prospecting Mons Olym-pica without an airsuit. The stinking tight-assed Hivers don’t want to cut an eighth on a single cancion”
“He won’t talk to me and he won’t go away.” She waited immovably.
Huachuco briefly considered having the obnoxious solicitor unceremoniously heaved pavewise, but if he was a bona fide man of God, however much his approach and timing sucked, someone might see. Or worse, take a recording of the incident.
“Mierde: send him in. I’ll get rid of him.”
Cina wafted. Her space in the doorway was filled a moment later by a short man in a brown business suit. His jacket’s integral hood was pushed back off his head to reveal the white collar. He wore his black hair cut short all over and had more Indio in him than the average Strip dweller.
“Why do you keep pestering my people,” Huachuco said belligerently. “No, don’t sit down. I don’t have time for this.”
The Collar considered his host calmly. His attitude verged on the patronizing. Huachuco took an instant dislike to him.
“Everyone must make time for God’s work, my son,” the visitor declaimed solemnly. He had a scratchy, accusatory tone on which words splintered like thin sheets of glass underfoot. It did little to engender any empathy on the part of his impatient audience.
“I’m not your son, padre, and I don’t believe in God. I’m a businessman.”
“God is also in business: the business of saving souls. Those who avert their eyes from the pressing needs of the poor would do well to look to their own.”
“Hey, I look after the poor. We have a big sale at least every other week. Tell you what: why don’t you bring your parishioners in next Saturday for our monthly half-off? If you have any, that is.”
“We of the Order do not preach in the obscenely moneyed halls of the great churches. We do our work quietly while embracing worthy individuals such as yourself, so that the contributions so generously made in our name may be guided straightforwardly to those most in need.”
“Like yourselves, maybe? Go on, get out of here. I have work to do. Go vend your shtick on Centrale. If you show yourself here again my security people will put you nearer heaven for at least three seconds. That’s how long you’ll be airborne before you kiss the pave.” He bent to his work.
His expression stiff as his collar, the visitor stood. “Our Lady does not take kindly to those who mock the Lord.”
“That has a nice ring to it. I’m sure one of our pro mixers can set it to trip-trop for you. But if you’re not going to buy anything, you’d better get out.”
The brown-suit departed. Without any yelling or cursing, for which Huachuco was grateful. Ill-considered obscenity was tiresome. The pave was home to some wild evangelicals, he knew. From the traditional End-of-the-Worlders to the more trendy Oceanics and the Silicon Surfers. He’d really have to take a moment to dictate a formal memo to Security, directing them to be more selective about who they admitted. Though you had to watch it or the Equops would be all over you, claiming you’d failed to provide equal and unprejudiced shopping opportunities for left-handed lesbian Rastafarians with Down’s Syndrome, or something similar.
Musik-Niche stores n
ever closed, but the administrative staff worked normal shifts. Except for Huachuco, who frequently stayed at his desk far into the early hours of the morning. That was how you built a business: by being the first one to open and the last to close. It was up to the boss to lead by example. Besides, Huachuco enjoyed his work. He liked drafting memos and scanning reorder sheets and negotiating for store space and licenses.
It was suddenly and unexpectedly much brighter in his office.
She was exquisitely, ethereally beautiful, and she hovered several centimeters off the floor as she gazed mournfully down at him. Her perfect face was unlined and unblemished, the nose sharp and Semitic, the large liquid eyes overflowing with unabashed concern. Her immaculate white robe, pure as unsullied chalcedony, covered her from head to sandaled feet in the fashion of an earlier time. She wore no jewelry or other form of artificial adornment. She needed none.
Huachuco leaned back in his chair and considered the specter. “That’s good. That’s very good. I have to admit it: you’re the best holomage I’ve ever seen. But then you’d have to be to convince so many people. Or do you think I don’t listen to the pave rave? Tell me: where’s the projector? Hard to believe it’s a portable; you’re too dense. Talk about steady-state renewal: I can’t see through you at all. They must tap into a building conduit nearby. Do they have to steal crunch as well as power? Sustaining your configuration, not to mention moving you around, would take a mass.”
“You have no faith,” murmured the female figure in a gentle, disapproving tone.
“You’re right there.” He raised his voice slightly. “Listen, you vacantes. When I opened my first store I had some stupid pendejos in every other night trying to hold me up for protection money, or just to see what they could steal. After I sent the first couple to the hospital and one to the morgue the word got out on the pave not to mess with Paily Huachuco. I guess you haven’t been around long enough to get the word. I’m not some dumb convenio store owner you can frighten with words and holos.” Leaning forward, he casually thumbed a switch on his desk. A loud hum filled the room.
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