Following the Compound’s secret practice of selling patents for their work to others who could in turn claim the work as their own, the scientists told JFK that they envisioned a day when microminiaturization would allow a small and powerful computer to function as the brain of a future MIA model so every man or woman could have a MIA or her male counterpart in their own home.
The whiz kids had also tried to explain that a fully functional mechanically autonomous cyborg would take a lot more work. The basic body was the same, sexless, but full-function MIA’s twat was a heck of a lot easier to slap together than full-function MAC’s robotic prick, and they had to make sure they were creating a tool of pleasure, not pain.
In the first few tests of an experimental mating between a MIA and a MAC, the funding for which most assuredly was not discussed in Congress, the malfunctioning MAC unit pounded away at the MIA, eventually shattering her titanium pelvis and bisecting her from crotch to breastbone before he was shut down.
Kennedy didn’t really give a damn about the MACs, what, was he a pansy? But he definitely wanted to see more of the MIA program.
“My kind of woman,” a satisfied Kennedy had told the MIA team after the demonstration. “She doesn’t speak unless spoken to, and she swallows every time.”
The MIA and MAC programs gave Kennedy the perfect reason to put a stop to Eicher’s pursuits. No more clones. Public reaction to them would be explosive, especially if they heard Eicher’s suggestion that clones could be used as spare body parts for world leaders. Kennedy thought that was going too far. After all, clones could be perceived as people, but androids were just things.
He had issued the noli scribo Executive Order putting a stop to Stern and Eicher’s cloning work. It was time to clean house. Everything must go.
It wasn’t until now, on the campaign trail and in the air approaching Dallas, that he realized he had forgotten to specifically mention the child. If the baby—and he hoped to Christ that there was only one—was considered an experimental by-product it would have to be destroyed, and that made him a little queasy. It would be better to shuttle the kid off to an orphanage somewhere.
He made a mental note to correct that oversight as soon as possible and mention it to the Vice President this weekend, when he and Jackie would be guests at Lyndon’s ranch.
Kennedy sat back in his seat, telling himself to relax and enjoy the trip, Texan rednecks aside. He’d be back in Washington in a few days and could take care of the problem then.
5
The Asphalt Jungle
Al Johnson was cruising down Interstate 40 toward the unmarked turn-off for Daniel’s Road, and home, with a bag of rocks on the passenger seat beside him. He felt like a hell of a guy. Nothing was going to screw up this day.
He was going to get back to town in time to pick up Mikey at school and chat and unwind and make dinner, and afterward as Mikey did his homework on the floor in front of the TV, Al planned to catch a snooze on the couch before his shift started. Then they could share a New Year’s toast of hot chocolate before he went out on patrol. He knew he’d never be as good a parent to Mikey as the trinity he had been raised by; momma, grandma and until Al was ten, great-gran, and it looked like he’d never get free of the paperwork holding him at the foster-parent stage, but he was damned well going to do his best to be a dad.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Al Johnson was one half of the entire police presence in the little town of Sunday Morning and he had just carried out his most demanding and important duty in weeks. He had driven east, passing through Needles, and then north, and at a place where three states came together he collected a few rocks from California, Nevada and Arizona, all within a short distance of each other. Mikey needed the rocks for a school project, and Al had promised the kid he’d get them.
Until a few years ago Johnson’s town had been a quiet, isolated cluster of buildings on a flat plain between Old Woman Mountains and Turtle Mountains. Al lived in town, even though his boss was the Sheriff in San Bernardino.
Like Needles, Sunday Morning contracted their law enforcement services from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office.
Most days there was nothing much to do except cruise the streets and highways. The radio could stay dormant for hours at a stretch. Al shared duty with a young guy named Burgess Sturgis. Burge was a stickler for detail, and sometimes a pain in the ass, but he was also a reliable kid. His lack of imagination and grim dedication to the law meant Al could relax during daylight hours. Al had the night shift. He was unmarried, fifty years old. He liked kids, and he was the legal guardian of a six-year-old boy named Mike Charbonneau.
Mikey had lived on the same block as Al. Al and the Charbonneau family shared a fence in their backyards and the kid was always climbing the fence and hanging around. Al had suspected Mikey’s parents were tweakers, and his suspicions were proven correct when some product they were cooking in their basement blew them to pieces while their boy was at school. Since there did not appear to be any other relations and the town of Sunday Morning was the only home the kid had ever known, Al had requested and been declared the kid’s guardian until the county decided what should be done for the boy. Al figured it was better than sending the kid away to an orphanage or foster home in some other part of the state.
Mikey had been with Al two years now, which showed that for the county Mikey’s case was a low priority. That suited Al fine because he loved the kid. The boy was still adjusting to things and Al tried to be as helpful and supportive as possible. When Al found out Mikey was working over the Christmas break on a school project on the desert regions of California, Nevada and Arizona and that Mikey needed rocks, Al agreed to get them.
A few odd burrs and boops were coming from his radio. He didn’t think much of it. He was preoccupied with thoughts of all the new activity in town.
Last year a think tank from UCLA funded by a governmental agency Al had never heard of had purchased a few acres of land outside Sunday Morning, fenced it off and began construction on a facility. They started by digging one hell of a deep and wide hole.
Sunday Morning had been chosen by the think tank because its isolation and quaint appearance were deceiving. In the last few years of the dotcom boom the town had become a test community for Comcast Cable, wired up the ass for satellite, phone and fax communications with fiber-optics and high-speed internet, all to the benefit of a high percentage of telecommuters living there including paralegals, commercial artists, and technical writers.
The two professors and dozen grad students who worked for the UCLA think tank called Doorways Technologies had given the local economy a boost with the construction work and goods they needed. They had nearly put the finishing touches on their crazy, upside-down building, which had two stories above ground and ten below, and were now hiring locals to work security and maintenance.
Al had a few casual chats with one of the professors who introduced himself by saying, “I’m Fred Callan. I’m a physicist.” Al would learn later that would have been like Jimi Hendrix saying, “I play guitar.”
When Al had asked Callan what Doorways Technologies was working on, as they both waited for cups of coffee to go from Eckard’s Café, the man had asked if Al had ever watched any Star Trek as a kid. When Al said he had, Callan told him the group was working on something similar to the transporter on the Enterprise. “We’re trying to find a faster way to get from here to there. Think about it. What if everything from casual travel to global shipping could be done in the blink of an eye without the use of hydrocarbons? The environmental impact would be incredible.”
Since he had been a kid in Vietnam and was now a cop, Al’s first thought was that some of the funding must come from the military. He could easily imagine the appeal of the ability to make American troops appear on foreign soil, ready to roll.
Unknown to Al, Callan had the same thoughts.
Al made it part of his routine to cruise by the laboratory every hour or so during the n
ight, keeping one eye on the scientists and one open for intruders. Sunday Morning used to be a quiet little town, and he was hoping it stayed that way.
Now not far from home, Al hoped he’d be able to get that nap in after all. As he passed In the Shade he broke out in a wide, jaw-cracking yawn, a weird feeling of lethargy settling on him like a thick warm blanket. The sun on the big aluminum shade cast a shadow over the front of the diner. Al didn’t see any broken glass or signs of damage. He didn’t see the bright white convertible parked in plain sight or the man standing inside the diner.
A few miles down the road he did see a black Pontiac pulled over on the shoulder. Two women were leaning back against the front of the car sipping bottled water. Their dress was business casual. One was a pallid blonde and the other was a mouth-watering dark-haired beauty. The blonde was wearing a skirt and the brunette was wearing slacks. Al momentarily wished it were the other way around. He bet the brunette had great legs.
When they saw the patrol car approaching the women squealed with loud laughter and got the attention of a man who was standing about fifty feet off the shoulder taking a leak on the dry earth. The man looked around, gawked, and began hurriedly shaking off and tucking in.
Al slowed the patrol car to a crawl and turned on his light bar so he’d be seen in case anyone not paying attention to the road was coming up from behind. “Everything okay here?”
The women nodded breathlessly, still laughing. The man shambled onto the shoulder with a look of horror on his face. He was wearing a rumpled suit and a big tag pinned to one breast pocket. Hi! I’m Fred the tag read.
“Sorry sir,” Fred said, approaching the patrol car. “Freddie Speckle Junior, Regional Representative for West Valley Auto Accessories. I had to ... you know.” He held out his right hand, waiting for Al to shake.
Al waved him off thinking, salesmen! Jesus, I’m not shaking your dick-hand.
“No harm done,” he replied, letting the patrol car roll by them. “Just make sure you keep it pointed away from the road.” He tipped his hat as the two women laughed again, and gave the car some gas.
He drove on for ten minutes, whistling a jaunty tune, and then noticed a car and truck pulled off the road. As he approached the Taurus he saw a guy in a ball cap and a guy in a suit, both of them looking like they’d rolled in the dust. His ebullience began draining out of him. Beyond the Taurus, standing by the rusted-out pickup were a waitress, a young short-order cook and another suit struggling to his feet behind them, his lips, chin and shirt covered in blood.
Al also noticed the guy in the baseball cap was holding a gun. He looked at the bag of rocks beside him, looked at his watch, and cursed. He hit his lights again, and got on the radio to the dispatch center in Victorville to give them a heads-up. A dispatcher who sounded new to the job told him to proceed with caution. Al racked the mike as he came around in a tight turn and parked on the shoulder thirty feet behind the Taurus.
* * *
Will saw the patrol car swing around and pull up behind the Taurus. He didn’t like the way things were going. Putting a bullet in the head of one of these Compound pricks was nothing and he would have done it already if he hadn’t wanted a few questions answered. The last thing he wanted to do was kill a local cop. Most of the peace officers out here were hard working underpaid family men. They deserved more than getting caught up in something like this.
Jeannie breathed a sigh of relief when the sheriff’s car stopped near them. She hoped things could get sorted out so she could just disappear. Working at In the Shade had been nice and Carlos was a good friend, but she’d run from the past before. She could do it again.
Carlos was shaking his head. He had nothing against cops, but he knew the more guns there were in one place, the greater the chance of one of them going off.
Al glanced at the shotgun locked is place between the driver and passenger seats, decided to leave it, and eased the door open. He climbed out of the car and faced the guy with the gun. The waitress and the cook were over to his right.
Will grinned and mumbled, “This guy’s gonna be real big.”
They saw the cop’s face first. He looked like Harry Belafonte in his prime, a well-fed Harry Belafonte. At six-four and two hundred and thirty pounds, Al looked more solid than the patrol car.
“Afternoon,” he said, nodding to Will, who held the only gun he’d seen so far. Johnson was born and bred in California, but he had a little Georgia lilt in his speech, which he’d acquired from the three generations of Johnson ladies who had raised him. The guy with the gun tipped his hat and grinned. “Mind setting down the weapon and stepping away from it?” If the guy had been alone Al would have let loose with a shouted command, but the guy wasn’t alone and Al didn’t want to spook him.
“Don’t know if I can do that, officer,” the gunman replied.
“I’m a federal agent!” Richards snapped. “This man is a fugitive and—”
“Bullshit,” the guy in the ball cap replied, ”You’re a hired killer.”
Al tucked his thumbs into his gun belt, his left hand close to the big Smith & Wesson revolver. “I wouldn’t mind seeing some ID.” This wouldn’t be the first time Al had encountered some nut claiming to be with the CIA or FBI.
Richards slowly reached into a breast pocket and withdrew a slim leather case. He flipped it through the air and it landed at Johnson’s feet.
Al retrieved it, keeping his eyes on the man with the gun. He had taken a lot of courses on identity cards, how to spot fake passports, green cards, press passes and others. In most of the courses there was an update on the current Government Issue cards. The one he held now looked legit. It said that the bearer was agent Dick Richards of the Secret Service. The ID bore the proper stamp and seal, was issued in Washington on 6/31/98 and it had a less than flattering photo of Richards. Al thought a moment. Something was out of whack.
Al reached for the radio, keyed the mike and got the same dispatcher he had talked to earlier. He asked for a verification of the card, relaying badge and serial numbers. He could have called up that information on the patrol car’s mobile data terminal, but that would mean taking his eyes off the men on the side of the road.
“Hey, what the fuck?” Richards yelled. “Don’t trust your own government?”
Al was about to tell Richards to shut his mouth, he hadn’t put his trust in his own government since it had shipped him out to Vietnam, when the young guy made a move and kneed the blue-suited man in the balls.
Richards gasped, “Dirty bastard,” and sank to his knees.
Standing behind Carlos, Richard Dicks freed a small automatic from an ankle holster hidden under his gray trouser leg and jammed it into Carlos’ back. “Not a word, beandog,” Dicks whispered. Carlos froze. Dicks grinned, his nose still dripping blood. Jeannie saw him in the corner of her eye and gasped. “Don’t even twitch, you whore,” Dicks rasped. To Carlos he said, “Hand the Glock back to me nice and slow or I’ll blow this bitch’s head off.”
Feeling like an asswipe, Carlos let graysuit take the gun, the Taurus obscuring the cop’s view.
“How is it you two are here with our Dodgers fan?” Dicks asked Carlos softly.
Remembering Will’s story, Carlos said, “He was hitching. We picked him up. We just started to talk when some assholes appeared out of nowhere and shot at us. Then you guys showed up.”
“So you two are innocent?”
Carlos shrugged. “Shit, yeah.”
The dispatcher came back to Al with a confirmation of Richards’ ID. Al racked the mike again. “You working a case?” he asked the guy in the blue suit.
Richards nodded. He was on his knees, head bowed, eyes squeezed shut. If not for the fact that his hands were covering his testicles instead of clasped in front of him, he could have been praying.
Al loosened the safety strap on his revolver, realizing what had been wrong with the ID card despite the fact it was confirmed by his dispatcher. “Drop the gun, fella,” he said to W
ill. Then he addressed Will and Richards, drawing his .44. “And I want both of you flat on the ground.”
Will gave the cop a speculative glance. He figured the big guy was close to fifty but still had a lot of ass kicking in him. Richards mumbled, “Motherfuck.”
Carlos winced when Dicks’ moist breath reached his ear. “Big dumb darkie just bought himself a bullet.”
“You’re fucking with the wrong people, Deputy,” Richards said.
“And you aren’t fucking with me?” Al asked.
Richards glared, his face twisted with rage and pain. “What the fuck are you—”
“Your identification card was issued in Washington?”
“Yeah,” Richards rasped.
“On six, thirty-one, ninety-eight?”
“Uh-huh,” Richards replied with a nod. Then he realized the error.
“How many days are in June, you dumb shit?” Al was watching the muscles and tendons in the young guy’s arm. They were relaxing. The gun was coming down.
Dicks took a backward step. “When I count to three,” he whispered to Jeannie and Carlos, “I want both of you to hit the ground on your knees. I can shoot through you or over you. Got it?”
Jeannie and Carlos nodded slowly.
“One,” Dicks breathed, “two ... three!”
Carlos hit the ground first, Jeannie a moment later. Her bare legs met the dusty dry earth, and her left knee came down on a little projection of stone as white and sharp as a tooth. She let out a cry.
Al looked in the woman’s direction, not wanting to take his eyes off the guy in the ball cap. He kept the gun on him though, until he saw the woman and the young Latino down on their knees. The gray-suited guy with the bloody face was aiming a weapon at Al, who started bringing the revolver around, but not fast enough, because the side of his head exploded and he collapsed.
Carlos nearly shit when graysuit shot the cop. There was a bang and a fine spray of blood droplets burst into the air from the cop’s head. The big man fell. The butt of greysuit’s gun knocked Carlos out cold.
Made in the U.S.A.: The 10th Anniversary Edition Page 9