THE SILVERBACK WAS CORRECT IN HIS assumption about his visitor. In the course of his long career, Cardenas had all too often been obliged to deliver terrible news to the grief-stricken. However, ever since his elevation to the rank of Inspector, that particularly onerous duty had not been required of him in many years. But with Sorong having made the request, and no one else available to carry it out except Hyaki, Cardenas felt himself left with no alternative.
As they waited for the girl to return from her rainforest hike, he tried not to worry about her safety while systematizing what little they knew of the daughter. Because of his singular talent, he was better equipped than most to handle the forthcoming confrontation anyway. That meant it might go easier for her-but not necessarily easier for him. While he would be able to read her emotions and anticipate certain reactions in ways only another intuit could replicate or understand, it also meant that he would feel her pain that much more deeply. Still, he knew he had no choice. There was no one else to do it.
It would help that, by all accounts, the girl was unusually mature. Or maybe it was just easier to think of her as unusually mature, as a uniquely gifted tecant, than as a lonely, isolated twelve-year-old on the run whose mother had just been brutally murdered. How much did she know about the reasons behind their flight? How much had Surtsey told her? Was she aware of the circumstances that had guided their time on the street, living with a stranger named Wayne Brummel who was not her father? Or had she endured it in comparative isolation, allowed to lose herself in studies of technology and nature?
They would find out very soon. According to the chimpanzee he and Sorong spoke with in Administration, she was due back from a morning walk with her bonobo guide in time for lunch. Care would be taken to protect her when she returned to the camp and then to channel her, not to her now-unsafe house in the trees, but to a quiet room within the main compound research building. As the solicitous silverback solemnly and sensibly pointed out, that structure lay alongside the Reserva infirmary. If her reaction proved health-threatening, she could be rushed next door for immediate treatment.
Offered lunch, the two federales refused it. They preferred to wait in the designated room, surrounded by the silence and efficient air-conditioning that made it possible for visiting human researchers to carry on their work in the otherwise oppressive environment of the jungle. Hyaki toyed absently with the seal tight that had been placed atop the sprayskin. At the rate he was sacrificing personal integument on this case, it wouldn't take long before he replaced his entire outer layer.
While his partner retired to the restroom to fix his bandages, Cardenas relaxed by admiring the paintings hanging on the wall. All of them, he had been informed, had been done by residents of the Ciudad. Some boasted bright colors but amateurish technique. A notable few reflected a sophistication of skill and acuity of observation that would have been the envy of any human photorealist. At least four of the local artists represented, the two guests had been told, contributed nicely to the Ciudad s income thanks to gallery sales of their work in Nueva York, London, and Zurich.
His ongoing appreciation of simian aesthetics was interrupted as the door opened and Hyaki poked his head into the room. "She's here, Angel."
Cardenas nodded resignedly. "Has anybody told her anything?"
The sergeant shook his head. "She knows that something bad happened to her mother this morning. She knows that some visitors from outside the Reserva would like to talk to her. That's all. Sorong escorted her over himself. I'll send her in." Withdrawing, he left his partner to contemplate the forthcoming encounter.
Having only seen a picture of Katla Mockerkin, Cardenas had no idea what to expect. The twelve-year-old who joined him in the sitting room of the research facility was tall and slim but in no wise gangly. On the contrary, she carried herself with a poise and maturity that suggested she was no longer on the cusp of womanhood, but had in fact already slipped over to the sweet side. Clad in tropical shorts, blouse, and hiking shoes, already almost as tall as her mother, she had straight black hair and green eyes, a startling combination in a tapered face that was attractive but solemn. The Inspector studied it intently, seeking clues to behavior, secrets of personality, subtle references to the young person he was about to confront. Hers was a beautiful mask, a chador projected from within.
But she was only twelve, and no matter how practiced and perfected the veil she chose to draw across herself, it would not prevent someone like Angel Cardenas from seeing inside.
"Olla-lo, Katla. My name is Angel Cardenas. I am an Inspector with the Namerican Federal Police." When she remained standing, he indicated the small couch opposite his. "Won't you sit down?"
"Sorong told me there were people from up north who wanted to talk to me. He was being very mysterious." Accepting Cardenas's suggestion, she took a seat, knees pressed tightly together, ankles touching, elbows at her sides and hands clasped together. A bound box, he resolved, as tightly closed physically as she was mentally.
Having done this all too many times before, he knew that postponement only led to the kind of rising anxiety that made everything worse in the end. "We've come to take you back to the States, Katla. It's the only way we can protect you from what happened to your mother this morning. I'm truly sorry. There was nothing we could do to prevent it." He waited expectantly. There was no way to predict how she would react, but he knew she was smart enough to make the requisite inferences. It was kinder than saying it out loud.
She didn't move. Just sat there across from him, eyes downcast, thinking. When she finally replied, her preadolescent frame, like her voice, seemed to have grown visibly smaller. "That's why she wasn't there to greet me. That's what LooJoo and Tip and Ripeness were doing at the house with all the… cleaning materials. I wondered why they were looking at me so funny." She swallowed hard, fighting her youth, trying to be very adult. "Can I see her?"
It was so very tricky, Cardenas knew, to be simultaneously firm and compassionate. "It's probably better if you don't. Sorong's people can deal with it. Another time might be better."
A grim, humorless smile appeared. "Another kind of cleaning crew, huh? Mom always said this might happen. But she didn't think it would happen here. Not here."
"I'm sorry," he repeated consolingly. "She must have been happy here."
"Happy?" Katla Mockerkin looked up sharply. Sensing what was coming, announced by the subtle movement of her muscles and the slight change in her skin color, he was not as surprised by her reaction as someone else might have been. "Mom was never happy here. I don't know that she was ever happy anyplace. She wasn't happy with Daddy, and she wasn't happy with Mr. Brummel, and she wasn't happy by herself." Black hair rippled. "I think she was happy when she was with me, but I was never really sure about that, either."
"Well then," Cardenas opined in an attempt to get the subject off her dead mother, "at least you were happy here."
Katla did not laugh. Scrutinizing that wax-smooth visage, Cardenas suspected it had not been jostled by genuine laughter in quite some time. "What, me* There's nothing to do here but walk in the jungle and look at birds and swat bugs all day long. Some of the monkeys are nice, but they're still monkeys. There's no real dancing, no music, no club, no tech leks. Nobody to swap ideas with except Sorong, and he's always too busy to spend time with somebody who's just twelve. Even if they happen to be human. 'Happy'? I was bored to death from the day we got here. I used to take long hikes in the rainforest and dream of being back in the Strip." She made a face. "I told Mom they inspired me. And they did. They inspired me to think about leaving here." Her speech dropped to a mumble. "But Mom- Mom thought we would be safe here."
"From your father?"
Her entwined fingers were clenched so tight they were turning white. "My father, yeah. My father, 'The Mock.'" She looked up. "He wants me back. I know that. But I don't want him back. I didn't want him back before, and I especially don't want him back now."
Keeping his tone as gentle as possible, Cardenas tried to meet the eyes that were avoiding his. "Because he makes you do things, right? Work on things for him?" She looked off to her right and nodded tersely. Anything, he noted, to avoid meeting his gaze. "He wants you back to work on this quantum theft machine."
Her head snapped around in obvious surprise, and her eyes finally did meet his. Dark and unflinching, she peered into his own- and laughed sharply.
"Is that it? Is that what you think?" Tilting back her head, she rolled her eyes at the smooth, sound-absorbing ceiling. "That old thing!"
For the first time since she had joined him in the room, Cardenas was confused. "You mean, his organization isn't making an attempt, with your aid, to build such a device?"
"Oh, there's a plan, all right!" He saw that she was unaware of the true source of the hysteria that was beginning to seep into her voice. "Seguro, there's a plan. But that's all it is. You'd need the kind of facilities they have at Livermore or Sandia or Elpaso Juarez just to build the models. It's lots of yakk, and hangle, and gordo lordo from engineers and techs my father keeps on retainer." She all but hissed. "I don't get a retainer, because I'm his 'daughter,' and I'm just supposed to help. Out of the goodness of my heart, and respect for my father. Respect! Dirty old men, most of them. And one dirty old woman. I hate them all!"
"Calm down," Cardenas told her. "You never have to see them again. Ever. I promise you."
"You?" She looked him deliberately up and down, sizing him up, and was clearly unimpressed. "You're just a spizzed old fedoco. You'll take me back and turn me over to Child Protection Services or something, and move on to the next job. The Mock will have me back in less than a month."
Cardenas shook his head slowly. "No he will not. We're going to put you in Witness Protection. You won't go anywhere near the usual CPS people. You'll get a new life. We can do that for you, I guarantee it. Not even your father will be able to find you, not with all the crunch he can hire. I wish it didn't have to be that way. You don't deserve to have your life turned inside out when it's hardly begun."
"How do you know what I deserve?" She challenged him openly. "Maybe I'm a bad girl, my daddy's girl. Maybe I do deserve this." She slumped back against the cushions. "Maybe I should just go back to him and do what he wants me to do."
Cardenas leaned forward so suddenly it startled her. "Don't say that! Don't think that. You're an individual human being, with a life of her own that's just beginning. And it can be a good life. You're not a feleon. You're not a 'bad girl.' I know. I can tell."
"Can you?" The sarcasm that dripped from her tongue was disconcertingly adult.
He smiled knowingly. "I'm an intuit, Katla. You know what that is?"
Her eyes widened a little and she looked at him in a different light, as so many people did when they learned that singular and significant truth. "Really? You are?" He nodded. "I've never met an intuit. Sure, I know what it is. Can you really read people's minds?"
"No." He sighed wearily. "That's just a street myth. What I can do is look at an individual, study that individual, talk to them, and tell a little more about them than almost anybody else. Doing that here, now, with you, I can tell that you're not a bad person. You deserve the kind of life that's been denied to you up to now, and you certainly don't deserve to be forced to go back to your father."
She clutched at his words like someone trapped underwater who'd just been handed another cylinder of air. "You really think you can hide me from him?"
He nodded briskly. "The NFP has resources even those who work for it aren't aware of. But to make use of them, you have to come back with my partner and me. Back to the Strip."
She nodded understandingly. "At least I'll be able to catch up on the vits I've missed. And dig into a real box. And maybe see some of my friends."
Cardenas would not lie to her. If she caught him in just one, he sensed, she would cease forever to trust him. "I don't know about that. We'll have to see. So you'll come back with us?"
She shrugged. "What else can I do? I can't stay here. Not without-without…"
It had been building ever since she had sat down on the couch. Now the tears came, fast and copious, in concert with deep, heaving sobs. He let her fall forward into his arms, and he held her as close and tight and secure as he would have one of his own, had he had any. The young girl's hands and arms that clung desperately to him were surprisingly strong.
What could he say to help her to stop? he wondered after several interminable minutes of uncontrolled weeping. Something to shift her thoughts, to make her focus her attention elsewhere.
Gently, he disengaged himself from her clinging grasp, though he remained within reach. "Tell me something, Katla. If the quantum theft mechanism is nothing more than talk and theory, then why is your father so anxious to have you back?"
Wiping at her eyes with the backs of both hands, she sniffed repeatedly and tried to focus on the unexpectedly compassionate older man. All at once, she smiled. "I'm s-sorry. I got…" She pointed, and it almost seemed as if she might laugh. Almost. "I got your mustache all wet."
Reaching up, Cardenas felt of his drooping mustachio. It was soaked with her tears and-other fluids. The expression of distaste that wrinkled his face was partially truthful, partially calculated. To his satisfaction, it provoked the desired response. Her smile widened as she continued to rub and wipe at her eyes.
"You really don't know, do you? My mother didn't tell you?"
"I really don't know," he confessed as he pulled up the hem of his shirt, exposing his slightly hirsute belly, and used the cloth to try and wring out his facial hair.
"I'm not just a tecant. I'm also a mnemonic. My father, The Mock, he doesn't trust anybody else. Never lets anybody get close to him. Not even my mother. But me…" Her voice threatened to trail away, broken by reminiscences of a submissive, unhappy childhood.
Speaking in little more than a calming whisper, Cardenas gently urged her to continue. "It doesn't matter what it is, Katla. I'll understand." Reaching out, he used a forefinger to tenderly elevate her chin. "Look at me." Once more her dark, grown-up-too-soon eyes met his. "You know that I'll understand, don't you?" There was no nod of acquiescence, but she did find her voice again.
"Daddy-The Mock wants me back because…" She stared off in one direction after another. "He calls me his 'little curly-haired mollysphere.' "
Cardenas blinked. "I'm not sure I understand. You memorized some things for him?"
Now she did nod, her black hair bobbing with the vigorous up-and-down motion of her head. "Not just some things. Everything."
The Inspector was taken aback. "By 'everything,' you mean…?"
Solemn-faced, the girl touched her forehead with a finger. "His whole business is right here. I don't know that I understand it all. Maybe it's better that I don't. But everything I was told, or shown, I retain. Names, places, people, transactions, times, dates-numbers. Lots and lots of numbers. Mostly about money, but also about- other things."
"Transactions," Cardenas murmured. "What kind of transactions?"
She shook her head. "I can't tell you. Daddy said that if I tell anybody, it makes me an accomplice to whatever I talk about."
In as earnest a voice as he could muster, Cardenas murmured intently to her. "You're a twelve-year-old girl, Katla. Your mother has just been killed. You haven't done anything bad, and you're not guilty of anything except having the wrong man for a father. I swear to you, nothing you tell me will make you an accomplice to anything. All you've done is memorize things. Facts and figures. Like from a book, or a molly. Can a book be an accomplice?"
She hesitated. "I guess not. I suppose not." Her face took on a slightly dreamy, distant expression as she proceeded to relate, at random, a handful of the kind of "transactions" she had been compelled to commit to memory.
The small hairs on the back of the Inspector's neck stiffened as he heard her recollections. Keeping his expression carefully neutral, he listened to a sampling of horrors and transgressions that would have left the typical twelve-year-old trembling with fear. Katla did not appear fazed in the slightest, leaving him to wonder, in spite of what she had said, how much of what she was reciting she really did understand.
Eventually, she returned from wherever it was she had gone, apparently none the worse for the self-induced trance. "Was that enough? Should I tell you more?" For all that it had affected her, she might as well have been describing the contents of last week's favorite vit shows.
"No, Katla. That's fine. Tell me: do you know what 'meroin' is?" She shook her head. "How about 'seventy caliberon'?"
She wrinkled her nose. "I think the first one is some kind of medicine. Isn't the other some kind of machine?"
"It has to do with a certain type of gun," he told her, holding nothing back. "The first one is- It doesn't matter." Since she did not question him as to the meaning of evisceration, he chose not to return to it for discussion.
No wonder The Mock was so desperate to recover custody of his daughter. Better than any spinner, or vorec controller, or para, she was a walking, talking, breathing gram. One he could call upon at any time to confirm the details of a business deal, or recite statistics relating to a previous transaction, or itemize the history and personal characteristics of a friend, an enemy, or a casual commercial contact. Within her innocent, preadolescent self she bore the details of his entire illicit business. What a boon that memorized information would be to a competitor! the Inspector realized. He now had an explanation for the sudden, avid interest shown in the girl by others, such as the Inzini and the Ooze.
Unlike a box or a molly, there was no way she could be hacked, no means of electronically or remotely accessing the information she retained. The Mock's twelve-year-old "curly-haired mollysphere" could not be corrupted by a virus or copied by a scanner. She could not, as a member of immediate family, even be compelled to testify against him in court.
That did not mean she wouldn't, he realized. Any lingering friendly feelings she might have held regarding her father had probably perished with her mother's violent death.
"I didn't want to do it," she was saying. "At first it was kind of fun. Like showing off, just to prove that I could. Then I got tired of it. But Daddy kept insisting. So I kept doing it. It was easy for me. When I got older and started to understand some of the things he was telling me to remember-not like the words you just asked me, but other things-I realized that they involved bad stuff, muy malo. But Daddy, he…" She paused, gathering herself. "Never mind that. I don't like thinking about that.
"He made me keep on doing it. He made me! I didn't tell Mom. I thought if she didn't know about it, Daddy wouldn't do anything to her. When she asked me what I was doing all that time with him and his friends, I lied and told her it had to do with the quantum theft project. Then she came to me one night, real late, when I was asleep, and told me to wake up and get dressed. I didn't understand what was happening until we got in the car and I saw Mr. Brummel. We drove away. We ran." She looked down at her clenched hands.
"But you can't run away from The Mock. That's what Daddy always told me. 'Nobody runs away from The Mock.' And he was right, he was right, and now Mom's gone, and I'm alone, and what am I gonna do?" As she buried her face in her hands, the tears began anew. "Where am I going to go? I don't have anybody."
"No aunts or uncles, no cousins?"
"If I do," she told him between sobs, "I don't know their names, or where they are. Mom never mentioned any to me. Maybe she didn't want me to talk to them because it might get them in trouble. With The Mock."
Rising from his couch, Cardenas moved to sit down next to her. When one strong arm went around her shoulders, she let herself lean over against him. She did not look like someone who carried within her mind the entire history and records of a worldwide criminal syndicate.
He waited until she was finished, letting her weep into his side. Then he sat back, gripped both her shoulders firmly, and looked into her eyes. "You'll be safe, Katla. Safe and well taken care of. I'll see to that myself. You'll be able to start a new life, with new friends, in a different place. And eventually you'll grow up, have a normal life, and be able to forget much of this."
Chest heaving, she shrugged indifferently. "Maybe what you say is true. Maybe it will happen like that. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Mom's gone, so it doesn't matter. I-I'd like to believe you, Mr. Cardenas."
He grinned and sat back a little farther. "I told you: call me Angel. Use the English pronunciation if it makes you feel better."
She had to smile at that. "No matter what happens, I won't be able to forget. See, I can't forget anything. I've never been able to. I don't know how."
A voice came from behind them. "Hey, you two. How's everything going in there?"
Cardenas glanced back at the concerned sergeant. "We're managing, Fredoso. Be done here soon, I think." The big man nodded and closed the door.
"Who's that?" Katla was looking past the Inspector. "Friend of yours?"
"My partner. Sergeant Fredoso Hyaki. He's a good man. When we get back to the Strip I'm going to let him take you around to meet some people who will help you to begin your new life." He eyed her questioningly. "If that's all right with you, that is."
"Why can't you do it, Mr.-Angel? You said you'd look after me yourself. I think, maybe, that I could like you."
It was enough. A weight lifted from Cardenas's chest. "I'll be there, to be with you, every moment I can, Katla. But as an NFP Inspector, there are other things only I can do. I'll visit you and take you around myself as often as I possibly can. When I can't, Mr. Hyaki will look after you." He smiled encouragingly. "You'll like Fredoso. Everybody does. He's just a big teddy bear."
For the first time, her mood seemed to lighten ever so slightly. "He reminds me of Sorong."
Cardenas repressed a laugh. "Now that you mention it, he does, doesn't he? You be sure and tell him that, every chance you get. Just think of him as your protector. Anything you need, you can ask him." He rose from the couch. "Will you come with us, Katla? Will you let us help you?"
"Why not?" Standing, she was almost as tall as he was. "Like I told you before, there's nothing for me here. Not anymore. So I might as well go with you." Her tone, her expression, even her posture radiated hatred and loathing. "Anything's better than going back to Daddy and his lepero friends."
Putting a comforting arm around her shoulders, Cardenas guided her toward the doorway. "Is there anything you'd like to bring with you? From here?"
She shook her head sharply. "I don't want anything from here. I don't want to remember this place at all."
"No clothes, personal items, nothing?" he reiterated.
She looked up at him. "If the NFP has the money to give me a new beginning, then maybe it could buy me some new clothes?" She showed signs of coming back to life. "I remember some shoes I saw in Olmec. Black, with flutterheels. Of course, I don't guess I can go back to Olmec, but…"
He patted her shoulder. "The Strip is full of stores. Even I know that a girl can't buy shoes off a box; you have to be able to try them on."
She nodded. Color was returning to her face. "You can do a virt fitting if you have the right kind of scanner, but that doesn't tell you how it feels to walk in them. They don't have a sim for that, yet."
"You're a tecant. Maybe you can design one."
"It'd be fun to work with shoes. See, if you just had a little activatable sensing platform that could link to the virt, and could figure out an algorithm that would let you compensate for the differences in customer mass, you could…"
As he listened to her rambling, disjointed soliloquy about women's shoes and pressure-sensitive coils and body fat analyzers, he grew more and more aware of what a remarkable young-woman-to-be they were about to accompany back to Nogales. Given some time to grow up, a little peace and quiet, and a suitable education, a bountiful future stretched out before her. A new identity would protect her from such as the Inzini and the Ooze. All they had to do was ensure that she did not revert to being a molly for The Mock. The best way to accomplish that would be to remove from the equation the one individual who most desperately wanted her back.
As soon as they were safely home in the Strip a determined Angel Cardenas, just as he had promised Katla Mockerkin, intended to take care of that little matter personally.