“No, only that some event occurred there that day that they want to cover up.”
Walking over to the viewindow, Jake stood watching the morning city. “I found out that Sam Trinity was also there at the hospital that same day,” he said, going on to tell them what he’d learned from Rozko.
“Sam is a ruthless hombre,” commented Gomez. “If they handed out an annual award for the nastiest government agent going, I’d bet on old Sam to take it in a landslide.”
“He headed for Topeka Complex the next day,” said Jake. “When Alicia had her breakdown, that’s where she was taken.”
Picking up his saxophone, Bascom started absently fingering the keys. “Are you suggesting that the United States government itself sent an agent to grab this young woman and haul her back to the Mentor facility?”
“I’m only suggesting that something important is going on, something bigger than a girl wandering off.” Jake turned to face his boss. “And I have a feeling I can learn more about it if I determine exactly what Sam Trinity is up to back there in Farmland.”
Gomez said, “Jake’s hunches are usually to be relied on.”
Dropping his sax atop the clutter on his desk, Bascom moved over to the vidwall. “Okay, Jake, we’ll book you on a flight out late this afternoon,” he said. “Take a look at this now, fellows. A police connection of mine arranged for me to have a copy.” He activated the vidcaz player.
Alicia Bower appeared on the screen. She was using her Banx card in a sidewalk kiosk. Glancing around somewhat nervously, the auburnhaired young woman thrust her card into the chest of the ball-headed robot teller.
The bot made a metallic clucking sound and handed her several fat packets of money chits.
Then the screen went blank.
“That was shot by the kiosk secam at 3 P.M. on the afternoon she vanished.” Bascom turned his back to the wall.
Gomez asked him, “How much did the señorita withdraw?”
“$100,000.”
“Caramba, that’s not petty cash, even for an heiress.” Gomez straightened up.
Jake said, “And this is supposed to bolster the theory that she’s off with a boyfriend—that she was taking out a lot of money to finance a romantic vacation.”
“It establishes that she was up and around after she was supposed to have visited the hospital,” said the agency head. “And it does suggest that she may’ve taken off, wherever the hell she did go to, willingly.”
“Is that Alicia, though?” said Jake.
Bascom blinked. “Eh?”
“Yesterday I had a conversation over the vidphone with Owen Bower,” he reminded him. “Only it apparently wasn’t Bower at all. Mechanix manufactures, among other things, androids. So—was that really Alicia we just saw?”
Bascom said, “Okay, I’ll have Doc Olan go over this footage.”
“I still,” said Jake, “want to head for Kansas.”
14
THE VIDPHONE BUZZED AGAIN. MYRA Ettinger lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the previous one, inhaled smoke, sighed it out.
She let the phone buzz twice more before bending to pick it up. “Allright, what?”
A small, slight man in his fifties, pale and wearing a grey suit he’d bought when he weighed considerably more, was glowering at her from the screen. “I don’t understand, Myra, why you never answer promptly,” he told the acting head of Mechanix International. “It’s very near to being insulting.”
“It might actually cross the line and be insulting, Jiri,” she suggested, exhaling smoke.
“Must you continually puff on those things. Disgusting.”
“Can you smell the smoke all the way back there in DC?”
Jiri Treska assumed a more rigid position at his wide metal desk. His office had no windows. “Do I have to keep reminding you that I hold a fairly high position in the Office of Clandestine Operations? You act as—”
“If you had a truly high position, dear, you’d be able to have a flunky do your phoning.”
Treska clasped his hands tightly together. “I’m not going to allow you to distract me with insults this time.”
“I’m, truly, not trying to.”
“A lot of people back here—in the OCO and elsewhere, Myra—are very upset with the way things have been going,” he informed her. “Keep in mind that there are still four names left on that list.”
“I’m aware of how many names are left.”
“Yet you’ve allowed not one but two damned detective agencies to become involved.”
“One of those agencies,” she reminded the government agent, “is employed by me. The dear lady who runs it hasn’t an inkling of what’s really going on.”
“What about the other one, Myra? We’ve had runins with the Cosmos outfit before,” the frail man told her. “Walt Bascom is a scoundrel, but unfortunately he’s not our kind of scoundrel. The man can’t be bribed or scared off.”
“But his operatives can certainly be killed.”
“Really now? From what I hear, you’ve failed twice to get rid of Jake Cardigan.” He unlocked his hands and flexed his knobby fingers. “In fact, one of the ops working for you actually stepped in to save—”
“Jiri, my sweet, I’m awfully busy just now,” she cut in. “I’ll make a note that you’re pissed off and get back to—”
“This is more important than anything else you’re working on.”
“Oh, it is,” she agreed, blowing out smoke. “But, really, Jiri, everything is going along smoothly and there isn’t any need for you to keep calling me.”
“If you damn people out there weren’t so sentimental, none of this would be necessary.”
Myra said evenly, “It’s her father who’s the sentimental one. And he, poor man, is not going to be with us much longer.”
“I told him at the time, it would have been much simpler just to kill her.”
“Despite having sold out to you people, Owen still loves little Alicia.”
“If she had been properly taken care of back then—”
“She’s being taken care of now,” reminded Myra. “Please, let me handle this my way.” She hung up and returned the phone to the floor.
Gomez stepped up into the Info Pavilion in the center of the main concourse of the Greater LA Spaceport. “I’m Gomez,” he informed the pretty blonde female android behind the counter.
“And?”
He pointed at the nearest floating loudspeaker. “A voice from above indicated that a message awaited me here.”
“Oh, you must be Sid Gomez.”
“I am.”
“Just hop into Alcove 3 on the other side of the pavilion, Mr. Gomez.”
“Gracias.” Shifting his grip on his single piece of luggage, a small battered tan suitcase, Gomez went over to the indicated alcove. After making certain that it didn’t contain any sort of trap, snare or threat, he entered and activated the vidphone. “Sid Gomez here.”
“One second, please.”
“Hi, Sid.” It was the hefty Corky Keepnews.
“What prompts this urgent communication, chiquita?”
“Can you spring for another 300 bucks, honey?”
“What kind of crass farewell message is this?”
The informant told him, “I got some stuff on the late Ford Jaspers.”
“$200 tops.”
“$250.”
“Sold. Fill me in.”
“The cops found the body this morning.”
“Continue, por favor.”
“They don’t know you visited the houseboat.”
“What do they know?”
“They don’t know who killed Jaspers,” continued Corky, brushing at her silvery hair. “They don’t know where Sheldon Gates, alias Guy Woodruff, is. They don’t know yet that Woodruff and Gates are one and the same.”
“Is any of this babble what I’m paying you the outrageous fee of $200 for, cara? My shuttle is about to depart and unless—”
“You’re paying
me the outrageous fee of $250,” she corrected.
“Okay, but get to the nub.”
“Turns out the cops have quite a bit of background material on Ford Jaspers,” she informed him. “He used to be a vidactor, but he hasn’t worked at that for over five years. He’s been using a little dodge, which is what got the law interested in him in the first place—although so far they haven’t been able to nail him. What Ford would do is join assorted therapy groups and play at being a very attentive and sympathetic listener. Then, after a few sessions, somebody was sure to blurt out some confidence they should’ve kept mum about. These nuggets of embarrassing info Ford then used to blackmail his erstwhile therapy buddies. It was a small-time dodge, but it kept the old boy going.”
“Who’d have thought Ford would ever have sunk so low,” said Gomez with a sigh. “Okay, he must have had something on Shel and tried to blackmail him.”
“That’s what the cops think. And it does sound likely, doesn’t it?”
“It does, si. “
“Okay, bon voyage. And don’t forget it’s $250 that you owe me, honey.”
15
BEV KENDRICKS GLANCED AROUND his living room. “This is smaller than your old place.”
“I had a wife then.”
She nodded at the suitcase near the door. “I hope I’m in time to save you from going off on a useless trip,” she said. “That’s why I stopped by.”
“This spirit of co-operation between our detective agencies is heartwarming,” said Jake.
She came up to him, tapped him on the chest with two of her fingers. “Damn it, this is between you and me,” she told him, anger in her voice. “If my partners found out that I—”
“I realize, Bev, that I’m getting along in years.” He took a step back from her. “But, honestly, I don’t need any further help and guidance from you on this particular case.”
Out of her jacket pocket she yanked a vidcaz. “I’m not supposed to show you this.”
“Don’t then.”
Shaking her head impatiently, she said, “I want you to look at it.” She extended the cassette toward him.
“Okay, allright.” He accepted it, crossed to the vidwall and popped it into the slot.
Alicia Bower appeared on the wall. She was smiling, holding on to the arm of a black man roughly fifteen years older than she was.
Each of them was carrying a large suitcase and they were being transported upwards on a rampway.
“That’s the Burbank Sector Skyport,” said Bev.
“Recognized it.”
The ramp carried the couple to an entry gate marked MEX-FLITES. The screen blanked.
Bev said, “I’d heard a rumor about the existence of this yesterday. It comes from a random sweep by one of the port secams. I didn’t get a copy until this morning.”
“You’ve followed up on this?”
“Yes, and I’ll be leaving for Mexico in an hour,” she answered. “I know I can trust you not to try to beat me to her.”
“I won’t be going to Mexico,” he promised. “But I would like a copy of this.”
“Keep it, I made an extra. Show it to Bascom, but don’t mention me.”
Jake asked her, “You know who the guy is?”
“The name he used on the passenger list is Rob Stinson,” she said. “There’s a Rob Stinson who works for Mechanix at their Oxnard Sector facility. One of my operatives is checking on him.”
“I appreciate your showing me this.”
She held out her hand. “I told you that you were wasting your time, you and Gomez both,” she said. “There’s no need to keep wasting it.”
“Nope.” He shook hands, then escorted her to the door.
He popped the cassette, carried it over to his phone alcove. Calling the agency, he asked for Doc Olan.
Olan, a long, thin man with a minimum of hair, was wearing a white labcoat. “I was going to call you, Jake,” he said. “About that bank-withdrawal footage of Alicia Bower.”
“Was it Alicia?”
Olan gave a negative shake of his head. “I got some vid footage of the real Alicia out of our files,” he explained. “From a society function she attended last year. Comparing the body movements of that Alicia with this one established—to my satisfaction anyway—that the lady seen in the Banx footage is not Alicia. In fact, Jake, she isn’t a lady at all.”
“Android sim, huh?”
“Exactly, yes. A hell of a sophisticated one, yet an andy all the same.” A satisfied smile showed on Olan’s long, lean face. “If you study the body movements carefully—well, nobody’s yet come up with an android that can move exactly like a real human.”
Nodding, Jake said, “I’m going to send you another bit of footage over the phone now. Can you do a rush job on it?”
“Is this yet another glimpse of the elusive Alicia?”
“Yep, in the company of an alleged gentleman friend. I want to know if this is a dupe or the real Alicia,” he told the Cosmos expert. “And, if you’re able, tell me whether or not the guy’s mechanical.”
“When you say rush, what—”
“An hour?”
“It won’t be my usual thorough job, but I can get you a prelim report. Will you still be at—”
“I’m heading for the skyport,” said Jake. “I’ll contact you from there, Doc.”
One booted foot resting on his suitcase, Jake was using a skyport vidphone. “Is there any way to find out?” he was asking Barry Zangerly.
Their client was sitting in a wicker chair beside his hospital bed today, looking somewhat better. “Alicia never mentioned anything like that,” he said. “Why would they have built an android dupe of her?”
“Number of reasons—security, publicity,” said Jake, “chicanery.”
“You’re implying that Mechanix is involved—her father, probably.”
“Yeah, but it’s possible Alicia never knew about the sim. Her father and other Mechanix execs sure must, though.”
“This android—what makes you think one exists?”
“I’ve been through two separate bits of video footage of the thing,” he answered. “Can you determine if—”
“What sort of footage do you mean? Are you sure it wasn’t actually Alicia herself you saw?”
“I’m sure.”
“What’s going on? You seem to be calling from a skyport. Do you know where she is, Cardigan?”
Jake suggested, “Let me ask the questions for a spell. Can you find out if Mechanix did build such a simulacrum? And if they did, what uses it’s been put to of late?”
“I suppose Roger can help on that. Could you, though, please, tell me what exactly—”
“Not just yet.” Jake hung up and grabbed his suitcase.
The Topeka Complex flight was boarding in seven minutes.
Roger Zangerly was sitting at his desk in his office at Mechanix International. “Yes, yes, trust me,” he said to the vidphone. “I am calling you back on my tap-proof phone. Now suppose you tell me why I’m going through all this rigamarole?”
On the phonescreen Barry said, “I want to ask you something.”
“If it’s about your girlfriend, I have already told you every single damn thing that I—”
“Is there an android simulacrum of Alicia?”
His brother cocked his head to the left, then started laughing. “Don’t tell me you suspect that you’ve been living with an andy all these months?”
“I’m serious, Rog. And, whatever you may think, I’m not loony.”
“An android dupe?”
“That’s right. Was one ever built at Mechanix?”
“Hell, I don’t think so,” said Roger. “Mechanix has, now and then, built special androids, sure. For, you know, celebrities, politicians and the like. As I recall, there’s even one of Owen Bower that they used to send out to make speeches at sales meetings in the hinterlands. But it’s been in mothballs for years.”
“What about Alicia?”
“
Tell me what exactly put this notion in your head?”
“Cardigan wanted to know if there is such a thing.”
“Why? What the hell does he suspect?”
“He didn’t tell me this, but I think—”
“You’re awfully excited, even though you don’t know for certain what the hell is supposed to be going on.”
“I’ve done a little thinking since I talked to Cardigan,” he said. “If they wanted to give the impression that Alicia has simply run off, they could use an android for that. It would be a damn good way to spread a false trail.”
“Unlikely. Because why would anyone want to—”
“Listen, Rog, can you, as a favor, look into this? I’d ask Dad, but he’s considerably more devoted to Mechanix. He’d figure this to be a betrayal of his loyalty to the firm.”
“Whereas I, sneak and cheat that I am—”
“You’re not as narrow as Dad can be at times.”
Roger sat back. “Why, that’s almost a compliment.”
“This is important.”
“Okay, you sound delirious to me,” Roger told him. “But I’ll do some sly snooping around for you.”
“As fast as you can.”
“As fast as I can without putting my backside on the line.”
“I appreciate this, Rog.”
“What are brothers for?”
16
REDHAIRED SAM TRINITY, CLAD only in his underwear, hefted the second metal case up onto the wide oval bed and smiled a thin smile. “You look bored, sweet. Are you bored? You sure look it.”
The naked girl sitting on the opposite side of the wide oval bed shook her head.
“You can talk, can’t you?” asked Trinity as he opened the second case with his chromeplated right hand. “Hell, I know you can talk. So when I ask you a question, I want you to respond. Are you bored? I wanted to know if you were bored, sweet.”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir, what?”
“I’m not bored.”
He smiled again. “Don’t you remember my name? I told you my name, sweet. Don’t you remember it?”
“Sam,” she answered very softly.
“Sam. That’s right. My name is Sam.” Reaching into the open case, he selected another artificial hand and held it up for her to see. “Do you like this one?”
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