Foster, Alan Dean - The Mocking Program

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the mocking program

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

ASPECT®

WARNER BOOKS

An AOL Time Warner Company

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or

are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

Warner Books, Inc., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 Visit our Web site at

www.twbookmark.com.

An AOL Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America First Printing: August 2002

10 987654321

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foster, Alan Dean.

The mocking program / Alan Dean Foster. p. cm.

ISBN 0-446-52774-2

1. Police-California-Los Angeles-Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)- Fiction. 3. Twenty-first century-Fiction. 4.

Intuition-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3556.O756 M63 2002

813'.54-dc21 2002022851

the mocking program

ONE

FIRST THEY TOOK HIS TALK. THEN HIS CARDS. THEN somebody boosted his

bosillos

thorough. After that, they vacuumed his clothes. Then some buitrees did

muy rapido

scope-and-scoop, canyoning him from neck to crotch. His kidneys,

liver, lungs, testes, and eyes were gone missing. They'd left the heart. Not much

of a demand for hearts these days. Not with good, cheap artificial models

flooding the market. Titanium or pig-take your choice. After that, he'd been

drac'd and boneyed for his recyclable blood and marrow. The pitiful shattered

remnants of whoever the hell the poor unfortunate had been lay limp as an oily

rag in the steadily drumming-down rain, denied even the dignity of staining the

pavement with blood.

Amid flashing lights, assembled vehicles, and grumbling federales, Angel

Cardenas stood gazing down at the carcass, imaging in his mind a celestial vision

of steaming hot coffee and the old-shoe comfortable booths of a certain cafe and

wondering why the devil he didn't do as Chief Pangborn kept repeatedly

suggesting and take early retirement. Fredoso Hyaki, Cardenas's assistant, rose

from his crouch, having finished making a recording of the gruesome tableau.

Hyaki was half Japanese, half Peruvian, and all huge. A friendly, expansive,

baby-faced massif of a man in his mid-thirties, he very much resembled an Incan

Buddha. Despite the cosmic arc of his abdomen, he was rock-solid as cured

concrete. Grunting softly as he straightened up, he stuffed the recorder into a

pocket and summed up the crime scene with a single terse observation.

"Just about enough left for relatives to lay a claim, Angel. Angel?"

Cardenas raised his voice so he could be heard above the Southwest monsoon

shower. In the harsh nocturnal glow from the nearby commercial complex,

glistening droplets trickled from the ends of his hangdog mustache. The sweet,

invigorating rain was the only thing on the street that was uncontaminated.

Though if the chemical analyses carried out by the more fanatical Green Verdes

and their ilk were to be believed, the summer downpour failed that test also.

Would he ever get used to seeing dead bodies on the street? Even after thirty

years in the Department, the inventiveness demonstrated by people in

slaughtering their fellow citizens never ceased to astonish him.

Why,

he wondered amid the lights and night,

could I not have been born a

dog, like Charliebo?

"I think it must have been easier to be a cop in the old days, when all they

boosted from a citizen was his money." He glanced at his companion. "Why are

you all wet?" Unlike the other slickered cops milling around the corpse, Hyaki

was soaked from head to toe. Rain poured off his round face like sweat.

His partner looked abashed. "Forgot to charge my jacket." Devoid of power,

the electrostatic charge that kept water from making contact with a cop's rain

slicker was nothing more than a failed promise. Hyaki stood out as the only

sopping-wet federale on the dark back street.

Not that the big man probably minded. The monsoon rains that faithfully

drenched this part of the Namerican Southwest from July onward through late

September made a welcome dent in the otherwise brutal temperature. Cardenas

enjoyed feeling the rain on his face. Thanks to the patented efforts of his softly

humming slicker, the rest of him stayed perfectly dry.

An advert appeared from nowhere, materializing out of the nighttime to buzz

around him like an insistent bee in search of pollen, all the while loudly

declaiming the virtues of Newer! Fresher! Better-Tasting! Lime-and-Salsa

Posteeto Chips! via a frantic directional audio. He waved irritably at it and it flew

off to pester Gergovitch from Forensics. Such mobile attack ads were technically

illegal, but like the omnipresent wall posters of yore, whenever they were

eradicated from one part of the Strip they quickly put in an appearance

somewhere else, endlessly repeating their annoying spiels, vomiting forth

discount coupons, and trying to wheedle addresses out of exasperated

pedestrians.

Gergovitch stood up in the rain. "Sudden neural interrupt," he was muttering

to no one in particular. "Trying to make it look like cardiac arrhythmia." The

medoggles that were his principal tool were alive with the readouts that flitted

like fireflies behind the lenses. Flickering pastel rainbows danced across his

partially shadowed face. Only when he switched off the internal telltales could

Cardenas see the man's eyes through the gleaming, sensormaxed

transparencies. "At least it was quick." He took a half-hearted swipe at the motile

ad, missed.

Stretching from Sanjuana to Masmatamoros, the evolved maquiladora

manufacturing facilities and assembly plants of the Montezuma Strip constituted

the western hemisphere's largest concentration of industry, commerce,

assemblage, cutting-edge technology, and trouble. Poor immigrants from the

south collided with development money from the north and infolktech from

everywhere. The result was a modest population of very rich people living

alongside and lording it over very hopeful, but often very poor people. If you

couldn't make it on the Strip, was the word in the soulpools of Buenos Aires and

Barreras and Lima, you couldn't make it anywhere. Job security was not

guaranteed. Those who failed turned despondent, then desperate, and finally

feral. Under such circumstances, with so much glistening, beckoning credit

floating around, it was all too easy for a despairing immigrant to slip over the

linea. If you couldn't manufacture it, then you stole it and sold it.

That was what had happened to this poor monger's most marketable organs.

Someone always needed a real kidney, someone else an unpolluted transfusion.

Black-market blood was an easily transportable commodity. So were eyes and

viable testes. Cardenas knew that better than most. His own incongruously blue

eyes were donations. Legal ones, biosurged into his sockets after his own optics

had been bungoed by- But that was old news, ancient history, chip spume. Right

now, he had a dead guy to eyedee.

The presence of the federales and the Forensics team on the damp back

street drew no crowd. No one was out walking in the rain in the commercial zone

of the Quetzal inurb. That was fine with Cardenas and his colleagues. They

disliked spectators. The silence left them to do their work unencumbered by

yapping inanities. Even better, the media had yet to turn up. Vit anchors, the

senior police Inspector knew, disliked the rain. It played havoc with their hair

and makeup.

Absent body parts notwithstanding, there was nothing notable about the

corpse. It was one of many that turned up on a regular basis, week to week,

month to month, as if ejected from the roller-coaster of life by some capriciously

snapped safety belt. Individuals who turned up smashed and broken like the

unidentified man at his feet were the rule rather than the exception. In the

frantic, feverish, frenetic depths of the Strip, nothing went to waste. The street

scavengers and the algae wallowers saw to that.

Ellen Vatubua was crouched over the torso of the corpse. Having run a quick

scan and found what she was looking for, she was patiently excavating in the

vicinity of the exposed left forearm. Nestled there among the bruised muscle

fibers and blued capillaries, just under the skin, was a miniscule fragment of

insoluble imprinted plastic. Gently removing the head of her probe, she

transferred the extraction tip to her specialty spinner and injected her tiny find.

Moments later she was reading its contents aloud. Cardenas and Hyaki

wandered over to listen.

For a dumpy, middle-aged Forensics spec, her voice was surprisingly

sensuous. Alerted to and made aware of this quality, Lazzario in Personnel kept

trying to get her to transfer to Dispatch. But Ellen liked being out in the field,

and analysis, and preferred working with dead folk to live ones.

"George Anderson. Thirty-two, married, residence four-eight-two-two-three-

six West Minero Place, Olmec." She hesitated as the spinner worked. "He comes

up bare as a baby's butt; no record. Not even a commuting violation. Blood type

. . ." She glanced up at the everlastingly mournful Cardenas. "You want me to

pop the rest of the bubble, Inspector?"

Cardenas shook his head. "I'll read it when the vetted report is posted.

Anything of particular interest?"

The owlish spec glanced back down at her spinner's readout. "Records

identifies him as a 'promoter,' but doesn't say a promoter of what, and doesn't

list a place of business. Only a home address."

"So he works out of his home." Hyaki fidgeted. He was growing tired of the

rain. "There's a novel conclusion."

Ellen smiled up at the beatific mass of humanity that loomed over both her

and Cardenas. "Like your bowels backing up during stakeout?"

"Run a deep scan." Ignoring the both of them, Cardenas was staring at the

body, forlorn and shriveled in the reflected light from the massive nearby

structures.

She gaped at him in disbelief. "Why?" She gestured with the spinner that was

reading the extracted implant. "This unlucky citizen's whole life is right here,

where it belongs, available for casual perusal. In a

dry

place," she added for

emphasis. When no comment was forthcoming, she proposed, "At least let's wait

until we get it back to the lab."

The sideways twitch of the Inspector's head was barely perceptible. "Deep

scan. Now."

The Forensics spec turned to shout at her superior. "Hey, Gergo! Inspector

here wants a scan. Onsite, right now, even though we got the

muerto's

ident

pill."

Gergovitch looked out from behind his medoggles. "He's the intuit, not me.

Run it, Ellen."

Making no secret of her displeasure, the woman slipped her spinner into a

holder on her belt and removed another tool from a second holster. As she

snapped it to life, she muttered, "I thought you freaks couldn't intuit a dead guy.

No disrespect intended,

Inspector."

Cardenas's tone did not change. "We can't. I don't sense or suspect anything

unusual. I just want to leave here confident in the knowledge that nothing's

been overlooked."

"Yeah, yeah;

si, si,

siryore." Taking a deep breath, she went to work.

Cardenas looked away. Grabbing the body's detailed DNA scan and then running

it past Records would take a few minutes.

Hyaki hovered close by; part mutt, part truck, all business. But wet. "Any

reason why the scan, Angel?"

Why indeed? What made him worry about dead people as much as live ones?

A desire to seek justice? Or was it nothing more than professional pride?

Cardenas spoke without looking back, not wanting to distract the irritated spec

from her work. He indicated the corpse. "Good hair-expensive transplant graft.

Soft skin. Two regenerated bicuspids, maybe more. All nice work." Raising a

hand, he gestured at their surroundings. "This is not a nice place. They don't

match up." He looked back at his assistant. "Why vape the guy from the inside

out, instead of the outside in?"

Hyaki considered. "One kidney's worth more than a truckload of clothes."

"I don't mean that." Cardenas squinted into the rain-swept darkness. "I mean,

what's a citizen from a nice, genteel neighborhood like Olmec, an apparent

cleanie, doing down in a muck urb like Quetzal on a nasty night like this? Why

isn't he home with his wife, watching the rain come down, or the game between

Arsenal and Chicago?"

Five minutes later, sensing movement behind him, he turned just in time to

confront Ellen. No one commented on the perfect timing of his reaction, least of

all the Forensics spec. If anyone could get used to the sometimes unsettling

actions of intuits, it was other cops.

Her earlier resentment had given way to a grudging respect, tempered by just

a hint of awe. "How did you know?" she murmured.

Cardenas took no joy in the small vindication. He had only been doing his job.

"Know what?" he responded encouragingly, even though he already knew

perfectly well what.

"That there was something not right about the

muerto's

ident." Intelligent and

perceptive, she was peering hard into the lined face that was half masked by

darkness and rain.

"I didn't know. Like I said, I just wanted to be thorough."

"Yeah,

verdad."

Her attention dropped to the very expensive and very wet

apparatus she was holding. "His embedded citizen's ident insists he's George

Anderson of Olmec inurb. When I coupled that info with the results of the DNA

scan and ran it through Archives, the readout suddenly looked like it had caught

the measles. Angry little red pinpricks started popping up all over my nice, clean

screen."

"So who is he?" Hyaki asked, vouchsafing new interest.

She held the screen up to them as she read. "Depends which you believe:

local eyedee or national. Archives says he's really somebody named Wayne

Brummel, of Greater Harlingen, Texas. And guess what? It also lists no place of

business, only a home address. In Harlingen."

Cardenas blinked at the small screen. "Physical description is a match. At

least, it matches what the wallowers left." He glanced past the handheld, at the

uninformative and now somehow ominous body. "Same question applies: what's

a cleanie like this doing here in Quetzal? And with two identities." He passed her

his spinner.

She mated it to her own, waited the necessary couple of seconds for the two

police devices to swap the requisite information, and then placed hers neatly

back in its holster. "How should I know? You're the intuit." She glanced upward,

shading her eyes from the rain. "Weather's starting to clear. Going to be very hot

tomorrow." It being late summer in the Sonoran Desert, her comment was worse

than superfluous.

"What do you want to do, Angel?"

Cardenas considered. He ought to let Homicide handle it, he knew. Except-

National didn't make mistakes. It insisted the body belonged to Wayne Brummel

of Greater Harlingen. Subcutaneous idents were difficult to forge. The man's

insisted he was George Anderson, of Olmec. Taken together they added up to a

real

mierde

magnet.

He ought to leave it alone, he knew. Follow-up on something like this was not

his responsibility. He and Hyaki just happened to have been in the neighborhood

when the flash came in. He could leave that particular neighborhood at will.

Instead, he opened his spinner and mumbled the phone number imprinted on

the dead man's ident into the built-in vorec.

Observing this, Hyaki was not surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised. He'd

seen it all before. The Inspector latched onto contradictions like a remora onto a

shark. The older man would be unable to sleep until this one was resolved.

Dragged along by his superior's persistence, the same would be true of Hyaki.

Still, he tried. "It's late, Angel. Maybe she has her phone turned off."

"Maybe she doesn't." The Inspector checked his bracelet while his spinner

dialed the unlisted number. "Yeah, it's too late for socializing. No, it's not too late

to learn that your husband's been found dead and boosted on a back street in a

rotten part of town."

He turned slightly away from his partner as the call connected. A sleepy

woman's voice emerged from the spinner. The screen remained blank: she had

her video pickup turned off.

"Yes? Who's this? George?"

The rain had almost stopped. By mid-morning tomorrow the amorphous

puddles birthed by the fading clouds would have evaporated completely beneath

the relentless desert sun. It would be as if the downpour had never been.

"Ms. Anderson?" Cardenas responded.

There was a pause at the other end. "Who is this? There's no Anderson at this

number."

Hyaki made a face. Cardenas's expression did not change. "This is Inspector

Angel Cardenas of the Namerican Federal Police. I am presently in the industrial-

commercial district of Quetzal, where the body of a man identified as George

Anderson, of four-eight-two-two-three-six West Minero Place, is presently being

prepped and bagged for a trip to the Nogales municipal morgue. His subcue

identifies him as George Anderson and lists this number alongside that address.

If this is not Ms. Anderson, with whom am I speaking, please?"

Another pause, then a guarded response. "How do I know you are who you

say you are?"

Now Cardenas's expression did change. "Who else might I be? And for that

matter, how do I know you're Ms. Anderson?"

"There is no Ms. Anderson." The voice broke. "How-how did he die?"

Cardenas covered the vorec with his hand and whispered to his companion.

"She's panicking." Hyaki just nodded. He could detect nothing suggestive in the

woman's voice, certainly not panic. But that was Cardenas. To a competent intuit

a dropped vowel, a twisted consonant, spoke volumes. And Angel Cardenas was

not merely competent: he was the faz, the very best.

Muy duroble.

"We don't know. The wallowers and the scaves didn't leave much. When was

the last time you saw him?"

"This-this morning, when he left for work. Are you sure you're a federale?"

"Extremely federale," Cardenas assured her. "So you're not Ms.

Anderson. But you know the George Anderson who lived at this number and

address?" Again he whispered an aside to the attentive sergeant. "She's crying."

Again Hyaki heard nothing in the voice emerging from the spinner. This time

he said so. Cardenas shook his head brusquely.

"Inside. She's crying inside." To the vorec he said, "Please, ma'am. This is a

necessary routine follow-up. Did you know the deceased?"

"Y-yes. I know-I knew him. You have no idea what happened to him?"

"No, ma'am. Did you also know a Wayne Brummel? And it would be helpful if

you gave us a name, so I could stop calling you 'ma'am.'"

"I don't know anyone named Brummel. I'd like-I want to see him. George. Mr.

Anderson."

"The bod- He's being taken to the police morgue, Nogales Division."

"All right-I understand. But I can't come now. I just can't. My daughter is here

at the house, and I-I have to take care of some things first. Would-eleven o'clock

tomorrow morning be all right?"

Hyaki's whisper ensured he would not be heard over the spinner. "He's not

going anywhere."

Cardenas glanced disapprovingly in his assistant's direction. "Eleven o'clock is

fine, Ms. Anderson. I'm sure we could all do with some sleep. Have you ever

been to the station?"

"N-no, but I have personal transportation. I'm sure my car can find it." She

was stammering now. "This is just terrible, and I-I don't know what I'm going to

do. What I should do."

"I'll see you there at eleven o'clock then, Ms....?" Cardenas lowered the

spinner and looked up. "She cut off."

Hyaki shrugged. Beneath his disabled slicker, flesh rippled against the night.

"Not surprising. You just told her that her husband, or boyfriend, or favorite

gigolo, has been murdered. She needs for that to sink in, to do some serious

bawling."

Cardenas nodded. "Hoh. That would be the normal thing to do. Except that

this is looking less and less normal." Above the mustache, incongruously blue

eyes that had once belonged to a beautiful nineteen-year-old French girl gazed

up at the sergeant. "Why wouldn't she confirm her name? She must know we

can pull it up from Records in a couple of minutes."

Hyaki considered. "You want to go out to the house now?"

The Inspector hesitated. "No, not now. It's late. Let's give her the benefit of

the doubt."

"What doubt?" Hyaki was cozing his own spinner.

"Hell, I don't know. Think of something." Turning, Cardenas headed toward

the waiting cruiser.

Hyaki found what he was looking for before the doors of the official vehicle

slid silently aside to admit the two cops. "Funny thing. City records say there's a

Surtsey Anderson living at the same address as our George Anderson. But she

told us there was no Ms. Anderson. Ain't that odd? There's also a Katla

Anderson, age twelve, listed as being in residence. Undoubtedly not the

daughter of George and Surtsey." He slipped the spinner back in his pocket.

"Which leaves us with the question of where to find Wayne Brummel."

"On his way to the morgue, apparently, dwelling in silent symbiotic

communion with George Anderson. A cleanie who doesn't have a wife named

Surtsey or a daughter named Katla." Muttering to himself, Cardenas slipped into

the seat opposite Hyaki. Sensing clearance, the door automatically slid shut

behind him. Hyaki put the unmarked vehicle in forward and the engine hummed

on full charge.

"You want to follow the body?"

Cardenas shook his head. He knew where the body was going. It was not a

place he was particularly fond of visiting, especially late on a cool night. He'd

spent far too many nights there.

"Forensics needs time to do their work. Not that I think they're going to find

anything else of significance. I'm tired, and confused. Let's go to Glacial."

Hyaki turned down the appropriate street. An advert tried to attach itself to

the window, careful not to block the driver's field of view. Static charge flowing

through the glass drove it away, squealing. The charge, like the advert, was

technically illegal. But police work was tough enough without having to suffer an

endless parade of flying neonic blandishments for snack foods, vit shows,

technidrops, soche services, sporting events, and assorted gadgetry that was as

unnecessary as it was remarkable.

The sergeant drove slowly, merging with the traffic. Even though the great

mass of commuters used the climate-controlled induction tubes or company-

supplied armored transport to travel to and from work, there was always

independent traffic in the Strip. With forty million people, give or take ten million

undocumenteds, spread out like people-butter from the Pacific to the Gulf of

Mexico, it could not be otherwise. But now, approaching midnight, it was

comparatively easy to get around. The evening maquiladora shift was still hard

at work, laboring in the vast spread of manufacturing and assembly plants and

their attendant facilities, and the bulk of the night shift wouldn't come online for

another hour yet.

The unmarked police car slipped straightforwardly through the largely silent

traffic. A renegade Ladavenz, tricked out to sound like it was running on an

internal combustion engine instead of fuel cell and batteries, let out a primal

growl as it accelerated among lanes. Though technically breaking the law against

late-night noise pollution, the three kids inside were not seriously abusing the

opportunity. Cardenas and Hyaki ignored them.

As soon as they skated out of Quetzal, passing the number eighty-five

induction shuttle station with its opaque, solar-energy-absorbing walls and

unseen commuters waiting patiently within, the looming shapes of the industrial-

commercial district gave way to an architectural panoply of codo coplexes and

enclosed shopping facilities. Coated in a wide range of solar energy-absorbing

polymers, the pastel structures were a spirit-lifting shift in tone from the

utilitarian gloom of Quetzal. The Glacial Cafe was situated at the end of one such

pedestrian coplex, backed up against a garage and rapicharge station. Only two

vehicles were parked at the latter, topping off their batteries for the night.

Hyaki dodged couples and families as he pulled into an empty parking space.

There was a larger than usual number of pedestrians on the street, reveling in

the rain-cooled night. Tomorrow, everyone would disappear indoors, when the

sun reasserted its ancient dominance over this desiccated part of the world. One

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摘要：

themockingprogramALANDEANFOSTERASPECT®WARNERBOOKSAnAOLTimeWarnerCompanyThisbookisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentsaretheproductoftheauthor'simaginationorareusedfictitiously.Anyresemblancetoactualevents,locales,orpersons,livingordead,iscoincidental.Copyright©2002byThranx,Inc.Allrigh...

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