Foster, Alan Dean The Mocking Program

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small streets and passageways long since neglected by the district public works department. Assuming
the place hadn't moved, his spinner could have led him to his intended destination straight away. But
pulling a police spinner would be a bad way of maintaining the kind of anonymity that kept one integral
this deep in the Bonezone.
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A pair of dogs crossed his path, snarled, and continued on their way out of sight behind a darkened
apartmento off to his right. The schnauzer had two artificial front legs, while its companion cocker
flaunted a pair of miniature reception dishes in place of ears. Both wore broadcast collars, indicating that
they were not strays. Someone had taken pity on them and, instead of having them put down, had
repaired them enough to survive on the streets. Biosurge talent was plentiful in the 'zone, even if most of it
was focused on procedures that would get a legitimate practitioner locked up and his license revoked.
As Cardenas walked, he found himself brooding on the meaning of "friendship" as it had been related to
him by Coy Joy. Had her paramour Brummel been speaking metaphorically of it, or had he been
referring to an actual place? A check of Strip place names as well as a more exhaustive search run farther
afield had found no urb, no street, no development named Friendship within a couple of hundred kirns.
There was a Friendship, Pennsylvania, and a Friendship, Iowa. Even a Friendship, Manitoba. Contacting
the local registries in each community had identified no recent relocationswho could conceivably be taken
for Surtsey and Katla Mockerkin. If Brummel had been speaking of another actual place, it lay outside
the boundaries of the Namerican States.
Was that the right passage, there, off to his left? Or was it the next one down? He struggled to
remember the nexus sheet the spinner had spun. Resolutely, he turned down the first narrow lane that
presented itself. If he was remembering incorrectly, the worst that was likely to happen was that no one
would respond to his presence. Unless someone made him for a federale, in which case he might find
himself staring down the quadruple barrel of an Ithaca spitter, or something equally unpleasant.
The passageway terminated in a door that appeared to have been cobbled together from scraps of
wood and scrap metal, but in actuality was a single sheet of cold-effused alloy sufficiently impervious to
do any old-time bank vault proud. There were no handles, no windows or ports, no visible hinges.
Equally invisible was the speaker that barked hesitantly at him.
"What is the word, byte?"
"There is no word," Cardenas replied evenly. "There are only numbers masquerading as words."
The hidden interrogator did not reply. Cardenas envisioned acolytes on the other side of the door
conversing animatedly with one another. It would take a moment for word of his presence to be passed
onward.
Finally, "What do you seek?"
"Aurilac the Wise if he's at home and not indisposed," Cardenas added solicitously.
"You're a fedoco." The tone was slightly accusing. The Inspector did not search for the concealed vits
through which he was being observed,nor the weapons that were doubtless trained on him and could
easily prevent any flight to freedom down the narrow, constricting lane.
"I'm a searcher after truth, likeyourself ."
"Is that what you seek from the Wise? Truth?" the voice wanted to know.
"None of us have access to true truth. Not even the Wise. We can only search for it. I'm a fellow
searcher." He smiled at the unseen speaker. "The Wise seeks the peace that lies in studying the places
between man and machine. My work is ensuring the peace of the first. On behalf of that, we've
exchanged communications previously. Sometimes information arrives in my personal box that I know
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comes from him. Sometimes I have the opportunity to help his Order." He leaned forward slightly. "There [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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