A meticulously diversified feleon was The Mock. A real verdad nasty-ass chingaroon. If his disciples caught up with the fleeing Surtsey and Katla before the authorities did, Cardenas knew the upshot would not be acrimonious debate followed by a succession of mutually agreed-upon visits to a marriage counselor. About the daughter he could not surmise, but he seriously doubted that Surtsey Mockerkin was getting much sleep these days.
Following long hours spent staring at info, he relaxed by striding the streets of the Strip at night, his dark eyes flicking from side to side and taking everything in as he walked off the energy that built up during the day. He paid little attention to the gaudy displays, the glittering municipal art works, or the persistent adverts. People were what interested him; the bustling inhabitants of the Strip in all their manifold musky ethnicity, a potpourri of colors, sizes, and shapes. In this, the commercial center of the western hemisphere, a casual listener could snak yakk of several dozen languages and dialects, from Azeri to Zulu, in addition to the predominating Spanish and English. Underlying it all, like a set of conversational box springs, was the provincial patois of the Strip-the jumpy, jerky hybrid argot known as Spang, for English-Spanish slang.
Cardenas could volubate with the best of them. His fluency was a frequent surprise to the ninlocos and algaeaters he often had to deal with. What he could not inflect, he inferred-one of the benefits of being an intuit.
Why hadn't he taken Pangborn up on his offer? He was as fond of Sanjuana's beaches as the next indigene. The Captain had been perfectly correct that the business of the puzzling Anderson-Brummel-Mockerkin axis could be dealt with by junior inspectors. Was Cardenas, after all, the secret masochist that some of his younger colleagues suspected? It wasn't as if he was angling for a promotion. In the last five years he'd turned down half a dozen higher-paying (and far less risky) admin posts.
Seguro sure, he loved the Strip, with its noise and flair and surprises and the constant, never-ending action that was missing from his own life. But that was not explanation enough. Nor was his lack of a stable home life, although his recent relationship with the Gen-Dyne designer Hypatia Spango had lasted longer than most. Maybe it was because he lavished the love he carried around like carefully guarded baggage on kids like Wormy G and Bac-a-ran and, most recently, Wild Whoh. They were his family. Where most federales gave out only citations, Angel Cardenas also dispensed hope. There were subgrubs and nins and orphanos out there he hadn't even met yet, and all of them doubtless deserving of salvation.
It was not only possible, but highly probable, that Katla Mockerkin was one of them, and he knew full well that any junior inspectors assigned to the case were unlikely to dispense their actions in light of that distinct possibility. Cardenas did not have to intuit the girl to know that she was worth protecting. He needed only to know that she was a seemingly normal twelve-year-old who had the misfortune to find herself caught between a duplicitous if protective mother and a corrupt, intimidating father.
Beyond The Mock's inner circle and the Namerican Federal Police, he did not expect anyone to be much interested in, far less know of, the circumstances surrounding Surtsey and Katla Mockerkin's frantic flight from the peaceful surrounds of Olmec inurb. So he was more than a little surprised when, finishing his dinner on the patio of the Tchere-cheri Restaurant down the street from his codo, he was approached by a tottering masque in human form from which issued the whispery phrase, "Follow me, si see, fedoco, if you'd still like to dock The Mock." The gaunt figure did not stop, but continued to lurch down the pedestrian street like some psychotic scarecrow fled in secret from its farm of birth.
The fluid outlines of the morphmasque rippled with every step the camouflaged figure took. Hastily settling his bill, Cardenas followed in its wake. Without a clear view of the masque's owner, he could not even be certain if it was a man or woman who shambled along beneath the ever-shifting veil. When it turned down an alley lit only by the diffuse glow from the remaining phototropic paint that covered the surrounding walls, the Inspector hesitated. It was difficult enough to try and intuit the intentions of someone cloaked by a masque without the added burden of trying to do so in the dark.
But whoever was stumbling along beneath the fabric facade knew of his interest in Cleator Mockerkin. As that interest was something less than common knowledge, Cardenas was quietly burning to learn how his unseen guide had become aware of it. Also, it had, or claimed to have, information. Trailing the figure deeper into the alley, the Inspector let one hand cradle the frac he always carried in his righthand pants pocket. It was capable of stunning a small mob; he did not doubt its ability to incapacitate one wandering masque, no matter how spizzed its owner might happen to be.
Near the end of the passage, the figure turned. Its appearance was now that of a tall, handsome young man. The scene was so quiet you could hear the condensation drip from the arterial network of conduits that served the buildings' air-conditioning systems. No water actually reached the ground, of course. Within the Strip, casual evaporation of recyclable water resources was a crime punishable, if not by law, then by the severe opprobrium of one's neighbors.
The morphmasque suddenly flared, and the image of a young man turned into that of a slender middle-aged woman. The Inspector's fingers tightened around the frac. But the display was a prelude to dialogue, not a threat. For a moment, Cardenas was afraid he had been lured sideways simply to view some adverts. If so, he had to admire the masquer's gall.
No, that couldn't be right, he told himself. The unseen wanderer knew of his interest in The Mock.
"You going to talk, compadre, or just flash me?"
The owner of the masque shuddered slightly, though whether from the effects of sparkle, degeneration, or laughter, Cardenas could not intuit. Young man became middle-aged woman became teenage ninloco became white-robed saint as multiple identities morphed rapidly before the Inspector's eyes. Having watched morphmasquing in action before, he had only a cursory interest in the process of shell-shifting. "You want to dock The Mock. The Turtle heard."
At least now it had a name, the Inspector reflected. "How do you know that?"
Continuously reinventing themselves, lights and landscapes undulated across the masque; the inverse of camouflage. The unseen owner became a street light, a postbox, a charging station and an altar, and, perhaps most tellingly, a garbage bin. "When you turn tortuga, you learn how to listen. I hear things on the backStrip, I do." The quavering voice grew louder. "Things they say, 'That intuit who's straight, he wants to know about The Mock's woman.'" Cardenas tensed slightly. "Your rep precedes you, fedoco."
The Inspector ignored the compliment. "What do you know about Surtsey and Katla Mockerkin? Are they all right? Are they still in the Strip?"
The masque became a flickering bipedal pillar of crackling lights and spinning optos. "It's caramba time, fedoco. Tiempo tempo. Time for all turtles to find a hole to crawl into and be very still." The trembling intensified. That reaction Cardenas could interpret: this would-be informer was scared. Scared bad, right down to the bottom of his masque's swaddling skirt.
"I won't involve you. What do you want?"
"For the sequence? Nada, homber. But The Turtle has suffered too much tampo tiempo. Too much time in jail." The figure morphed into a quite detailed image of a narrow, barred cell. "Next time I'm in dock, maybe I call on my good compadre Cardenas the intuit, and they cut me a crease, you know so?" Again the serious shudder. "In Rehab they take away your shell!"