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he landed.
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Two lanky boys of about ten were coming, cautiously, up the beach
toward Gomez. Walking close together, both curious and frightened.
Jake sprinted, skirting the debris on the beach, and got to his
partner's side. He dropped to one knee, touched his fingertips to
Gomez's neck. "Still alive," he said, relieved.
"Some fireworks, amigo," muttered Gomez, eyelids fluttering.
"That they were," agreed Jake. "Just take it easy--there ought to be
an ambulance here any minute."
Alarm sirens had been hooting up on the Boardwalk for several minutes
now. And, far off, the sirens of a medical van could be heard
Jake looked up and motioned to the boys, who'd halted about five feet
away. "Go on up to the Boardwalk and make sure a medibot gets down
here," he said.
The two boys didn't move. Finally the blond one said, "How much?"
"For what?"
"To run an errand for you, mister."
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"A dollar."
The dark-haired boy shook his head. "Five bucks or you can {orget
it."
Jake stood up, rapidly, and pointed at them. "Get your ass up there
right now and get help. You'll get your money when you get back
here."
The dark-haired one seemed on the brink of arguing, but his companion
clutched his arm and yanked him into a run. They started scrambling up
the Boardwalk supports.
"I think," said Gomez in a weak, faraway voice, "maybe my leg left one,
huh? .. . it's broken."
Jake crouched near him. "It could be--legs don't usually bend this
way."
"Muy tori to
"Who's stupid--me or you?"
"I'm the one.." should've suspected that.." bum was a kamikaze."
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"He was a what?"
Gomez sighed but didn't answer.
Jake leaned closer to his partner. Gomez was still alive, but he'd
passed out.
Two white-enameled medibots came down for him a few minutes later.
\The black plainclothes cop didn't think much of Jake. "Well, it
sure didn't take you long to start something, Cardigan," he was saying.
"Only your second day off the ice and already you--"
"C'mon, Captain Hambrick. You know damn well I didn't have anything to
do with what happened."
"What I know is that Gomez, who was dumb enough to trust you again, is
here in the emergency ward." The captain was tall and wide and his
voice tended to rumble.
He and Jake were standing in the waiting room of the Emergency Wing of
the Pacific Coast Hospital. The green-tinted see thru pl asti-glass
walls looked down on a wide landing parking area and beyond that a new
tract of stilt houses was in the process of being built out over the
ocean.
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"What's important is Gomez right now." Jake was facing his former
Southern California State Police boss. "Our standing here yelling at
each other isn't much going to help him."
Outside another skyarnbulance came chuffing down through the afternoon
to the landing area. The rear doors popped open seconds after it
touched ground and two medibots eased out carrying a stretcher.
There was a gaunt young woman, her skin pale and bluish and her eyes
staring and deeply underscored with shadows, strapped to the
stretcher.
"Tekkie," muttered Harnbriek, watching them rush her inside the
hospital. "Seizure, I'd guess. We can't blame this one on you,
though, since you haven't been out long enough to get back into Tek
dealing."
The android doctor Jake had talked to fifteen minutes earlier came back
into the waiting room through a white swing door He was believably
humanoid, only the AND-MD tag he was required by law to wear on his
mediacket gave him away.
Jake crossed over to him. "Anything new on Oornez?"
"He's conscious and our robot brainseanners are going over him, Mr.
Cardigan. It looks as though Mr. Gomez isn't as seriously iniured as
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we initially estimated."
"That's great. Can I see him?"
"Not just yet, no," said the android doctor, shaking his handsome head.
"We have to run quite a few more tests before we can be absolutely
certain about your friend's condition."
"What about the head injuries?"
"It will probably turn out to be no more than a concussion."
Nodding at Jake and the captain, he went back in to Gomez.
"So you didn't succeed," said Captaih Hambrick, "in killing
Gomez this time."
Walking away from him, Jake sat on the edge of one of the crimson
p]astiglass visitors' chairs.
Hambrick sat, grunting some, in the next chair. "While we're waiting
for more news, I want to talk to you," he said. "Tell me your version
of what happened."
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"Tell me something first. That panhandler was an android--but how'd
they rig him to kill off Dr. Danenberg?"
"Hell, your Trek-running buddies can explain all that to you. That
beggar andy was what they ca]] a kamikaze."
?rowning, Jake said, "So that's what Gomez was trying to tell
me--something new to me."
"That's right, you guys don't get to see the vidnews or read a fax
paper up in the Freezer."
"What exactly is the thing?"
"it's a very high class andy," said Hambrick. "We got our first
kamikaze killing in GLA just about a year ago. Japan's where they
first turned up. They're very expensive, but then Tek runners rarely
worry about budgets. These damn an dies can pass for humans, as can
most of the more expensive an dies these days. But the kamikazes can
also fool just about any security system--even the most sophisticated
ones." He stared out into the afternoon. "Okay, so a kamikaze is
instructed to go after a specific target, somebody that one or another
of the Tek kingpins wants out of the way. The kamikaze locates his
target, quite often in a crowd--which means we're usually likely to get
some fringe deaths along with the main hit. The android, which can be
a male or female, will just walk right up to the target. Sometimes it
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pretends to be an old friend, or maybe a tourist who's lost or, as
today in the Malibu Sector, a bum looking to get a handout. Then the
andy touches the victim-could be a handshake, a pat on a back or even
an embrace. Soon as that contact is made there's an explosion. It
blows up the victim, the andy and whatever's in the vicinity.
Expensive, but impressive." "Kiss of death," murmured Jake. "Huh?"
"Reminded me of an old underworld custom I heard about once." "We've
had twenty-seven kamikaze deaths in GLA so far," Ham-brick told Jake.
"Across the whole country the total is around z64. Over in Japan,
where they really love the things, there have been 467 kamikaze murders
to date."
"Okay, I know what it is now," said Jake. "But why use it on Dr.
Danenberg? Far as I know, she hasn't a damn thing to do with the
Tek trade."
Leaning, Hambrick tapped Jake's chest with his forefinger. "Well now, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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