PART THREE. Kids
"It's anytime. Do you know where your urchin is?" (datastream graffito)
— 1-
After a few weeks, my head and neck rig came off. B.B.'s wrist brace came off about the same time.
And all the while I'd been thinking about the guy who had called himself Earl Khambot. What can you say about a client who didn't exist?
Further, what can you say about a client who didn't exist who paid you in hard to find someone else who also didn't exist?
Severe neuronal dysfunction, right?
But that's what appeared to have happened. Earl Khambot had lied to me about his own name yet had paid me in advance in good metal to find the fictional daughter he had supposedly given over to the urchins as a babe.
Why?
Couldn't think of a single reason.
Couldn't complain, either. Had his gold, and that was not exactly what one would call a heavy burden.
But it became clear to me after a while that I was going to have to find the guy who'd called himself Earl Khambot or go crazy. Not that I'd have a great deal of trouble squeezing the search into my busy schedule. After all, I'd been out of the business for a pair of years, and hadn't been all that terribly busy when things were in hyperdrive, relatively speaking.
So I used my copious slack time to apply my sector-renowned tracking skills to hunting down Earl Khambot. Knew it wouldn't be easy, but I was getting first-hand experience with the concept of obsession" and had to keep going. It wouldn't let up on me.
Why?
Everybody tries to gain in some way by whatever they do. Even if they give a trinket to an urchin beggar, they're getting a feelgood in return. Even crazy people have their reasons for doing things. Plenty of times they're rotten reasons, but at least you could see what they were after. With Khambot I couldn't even guess. The trail was cold but it didn't matter. I had to know. And to know, I had to find him.
Wished I could have traced him through his thumb, but that was out because he'd paid me in gold. That had impressed me at first as a gesture of trust and good will, and a sure sign that he didn't want our business relationship recorded in Central Data. Perfectly fine with me. And perfectly consistent with the job he wanted me to do: Locate a supposedly illegal child.
Who apparently didn't exist either.
Started driving me crazy.
What had been Khambot's angle? What did he get out of our little transaction?
Didn't know, but was damn sure going to find out.
Or so I thought.
Came up blank all over the Megalops. No one could recollect ever hearing his name before; and although a fair number said he looked vaguely familiar, no one could say where they'd seen him. B.B. even had a couple of urchingangs looking for traces of Earl Khambot but they came up null score.
Looked hopeless.
So imagine my surprise when I find him in my home.
Right.
I was sitting in my polyform contour chair in my cozy little compartment; the picture of modern domestic tranquility: Me, the urch, and the iguana around the vid.
That was where I found him. On the vid during good ol' Newsface Four's datacast.
It was a VersaPili commercial. The one where the guy up front starts off swaying back and forth in completely hairless holographic splendor, then grows a little moustache, then some chest hair, then a heart-shaped pubic bush, then starts with hairy designs all over his body while the back-up chorus dances and chants: It's automatic,
It's enzymatic,
So pragmatic
You'll be ecstatic!
Stimulate or numb your hairy molecules!
Hirsutize or dormatize those follicules!"
A certifiable classic. Everyone remembered it because it used real people instead of digital constructs. And guess who I spotted prancing around in the chorus?
Right.
Started shouting like a black holer: "It's him! Damn the Core, it's him!"
Scared the hell out of B.B. who was visiting again after one of his periodic sojourns home to the Lost Boys. He spilled half a cup of green FlavoPunch all over himself.
"Wha? Wha?" he said, twisting that boney body this way and that, bright brown eyes popping. "Who's him? Who?"
"That guy there in the back on the right! The one with the cubed hair! It's him! Khambot! Earl dregging Khambot!"
"Sure?" he said. He was trying to wipe the green goop off him but succeeded only in smearing it deeper into the fabric of his jump.
"Pretty sure."
Moved closer for a better look but the commercial faded from the holochamber to be replaced by Newsface Four again. Told it to retrieve the commercial and ordered it to freeze when the guy in question stepped forward for a spin. Checked him from a couple of different angles.
Khambot all right. Or his clone.
Told the vid to relocate the leading edge of the datastream, then sat back in the chair and considered: mystery man Earl Khambot — low odds that was his real name — was really a song-and-dance man. Wasn't too sure how happy I was with that revelation.
"How you gonna find him, Siggy-san?" B.B. said.
Sometime during the past week he had stopped calling me Mr. Dreyer. Wasn't something I liked but wasn't about to make an issue of it, either. He had found a way to clean the green gook off his jump by letting Iggy lap it up with his big coarse tongue. Never dreamed an iguana would take to FlavoPunch. Maybe it was a nice break from the compartment's roaches.
"Could be I'll go into the commercial business."
— 2-
Finding Khambot wasn't as easy as I'd thought. Took me days to snake my way through the various departments of the VersaPili division of the Leason Corporation until I got to someone who had the name of the company that had produced that particular commercial for them. Turned out to be one of these avant guard artsy groups that was dedicated to using live actors. From them I got the names of the five guys in the chorus — nobody there seemed to emember the name of the second guy from the right so I took all five names and began searching them out.
Got lucky with number three.
Earl Khambot turned out to be Deen Karmo. Lived alone in a small compartment in an old complex in Queens. A small building, holographed up to look like the top half of the old Chrysler Building. That alone told me it was old and seedy — the Chrysler had been the most popular of the very early envelopes — and the lobby confirmed the impression.
Waited till he left one morning, then let myself in. Easily. His security rig was rudimentary. And once inside I knew why. The guy didn't have anything worth taking. Made my place look like a palace.
Being a flesh-and-blood song-and-dance man these days obviously didn't pay well.
Made myself at home and waited for him to come back. Was resigned for a long haul but he surprised me by showing up in a couple of tenths.
Didn't even look up as he came in. He was humming a tune and dressed in the latest style just as he'd been when showed up at my office that one time. Still a real pretty-boy. The door had already slid completely shut behind him before he spotted me.
He dropped the package in his hand.
"What are you doing in here? I'm calling security!"
He reached for the panic button. Obviously he didn't recognize me.
"You shock me, Earl," I said quickly. "Throwing out your old friend without even a hello."
His finger stopped about a millimeter short of the button.
"My name's not — "
He gave me a closer look. Came the dawn:
"You — you're that, that, that — "
"Investigator."
"Right!" He smiled. "How have you been, Mr…? Forgive me, I forget your name."