Montezuma Strip
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
and nearly took
Cardenas with it.
Wind erupted into the offices, blasting his thin hair across his head. On screen the visual had gone berserk, bereft of logic
and organization. A dull roaring pounded in his ears.
Something was coming out of the wall.
A full-sense hallo, a monstrous alien shape, thick white slime, an oozing mass of biocircuitry-generated false collagen, bristling
with raw neural connectors that reached for him.
As it drew near, it became mostly mouth, a dark, bottomless psychic pit that extended back into the wall, lined with teeth
that were twitching, mindless biogrowths.
Cardenas stumbled backward. The expanding mouth was ready to swallow him, the steady roar from its nonexistent throat like
the approach of a train inside a tunnel.
Hit
the release.
The voice that screamed at him was a tiny, fading squeak. His own. He extended a shaky hand…
* * *
The I Inside
Krull
The Man Who Used the Universe
Pale Rider
Shadowkeep
Starman
Cyber Way
Glory Lane
The Damned Trilogy
Flinx of the Commonwealth
Codgerspace
Midworld
THE SPELLSINGER SERIES:
Spellsinger*
The Hour of the Gate*
The Day of the Dissonance*
The Moment of the Magician*
The Paths of the Perambulator*
The Time of the Transference*
Son of Spellsinger*
Chorus Skating*
*Published by
WARNER BOOKS
“Sanctuary,” copyright © 1988 by Thranx, Inc.; first appeared in
Amazing
as written by James Lawson.
“Heartwired,” copyright © 1992 by Thranx, Inc.; first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
as written by James Lawson.
“Gagrito,” copyright © 1993 by Thranx, Inc.; first appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
as written by James Lawson.
“Hellado,” copyright © 1993 by Thranx, Inc.; first appeared in
Amazing
as written by James Lawson.
“Our Lady of the Machine,” copyright © 1994 by Thranx, Inc.; first appeared in
Amazing.
WARNER BOOKS EDITION
Copyright © 1995 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Aspect is a trademark of Warner Books, Inc.
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First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2624-2
For Sebastian Horsley,
Who, much as he decries the travel time required
to get to the end of the Journey,
Seems to be enjoying the trip nonetheless.
Contents
Alan Dean Foster
S
EX and Money.
I happen to think they’re the two prime motivating forces of human existence. Always have been, are now, always will be. Somewhat
but not entirely interchangeable in that you can use the former to acquire the latter, but it’s much easier to use the latter
to obtain the former. Give someone enough money and the sex will follow. The reverse isn’t always true.
There are a lot of magazines out there. Quite a few deal with sex, and not only the overtly pornographic, or the covertly
pornographic (like
Playboy
and
Penthouse).
Picked up a copy of
Cosmopolitan
lately? How about
Reader’s Digest?
Yep, the
Reader’s Digest.
I’ve noted with academic interest that each month’s cover of America’s favorite magazine (excepting perhaps
TV Guide,
which is equally obsessed) now contains at least one article about matters sexual.
And now that I’ve managed to get you to read this far, I can tell you that the tales in this tome don’t arise from an interest
in sex. Though they did originate because I subscribe to a certain magazine.
It’s called
The Economist.
British-based, I happen to think it’s the best news magazine in the world. At least, it’s the best I’ve come across. Appears
weekly and contains more sheer information in each issue than any two issues of
Time
and
Newsweek
put together. Funnier writing, too. There are times when I’m convinced that Basil Fawlty’s elder brother has an advisory
position on the editorial board.
Not that every article in the magazine is about money. It’s just that, as in the real world, money inspires, relates to, or
impinges on every subject the magazine tackles. If it’s soccer, we’re sure to hear about the World Cup champion Brazilian
team trying to smuggle a few million in American purchases past sharp-eyed hometown Customs officials. If the subject is art,
it’s the financial ill health of major orchestras, or festivals, or operas, you’re likely to read about. If technology, it’s
how new developments might inspire new businesses. These in addition to articles on banking, international financial dealings,
and so forth.
Which brings me to The Border.
I use the caps because if you live in my quarter of the United States, there’s only one border, and that’s the one we share
with Hispanic America. Not just Mexico, though sheer physical proximity gifts (or curses) our Mexicano neighbors with the
majority of the press. I refer to all the people who live south of the line, from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.
Some of them would like to work here. Not necessarily live, as the headlines would have you believe, but just work. Make a
living. Support the family. A few make it. Most do not. But thanks to developments in international economics, they now have
a real choice between staying home and immigrating illegally.
It’s called the
maquiladora.
Over the past twenty years, hundreds of industrial facilities have been constructed on the Mexican side of The Border. These
plants assemble components fashioned elsewhere into finished products for export not only to the U.S. but to Europe
and even Asia. Hundreds of
Norteamericano
companies large and small have found that you don’t need to have your product assembled in Taiwan, or Indonesia, or Malaysia,
or even China. Not when there’s a vast pool of willing labor, cheap and skilled or unskilled, just down the road.
The result is that tens of thousands of poor Hispanic Americans have crowded into border towns and provinces, seeking a steady
wage and a better life in the communities that are growing up around these plants. Growing, hell; they’re exploding, erupting,
bursting at the seams. But much more is happening because of them than mere economic integration.
A whole new culture is coalescing along The Border, one comprised equally of
Norte
and Hispanic American influences. Especially since the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), trade between
the U.S. and Mexico has increased at an even faster pace than it had been previously. The consequences are dramatic, and not
all of them are blatant.
In Arizona and southern California in particular, thousands of retirees and folks on fixed income travel across the border
for medical services; everything from pills to dental work. They’re passed by hordes of increasingly well-off southerners
who prefer to shop the clean, better-stocked malls of San Diego and Tucson than those of Tijuana. In Texas it’s long been
nigh impossible to tell where the city of El Paso ends and Ciudad Juarez begins. Literally cross a street and you’re in another
country. But not another culture. You can buy excellent Mexican food in El Paso, and get your McDonald’s fix in Juarez.
People who live along the border are generally conversant in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. The latter deals with economics
especially well. Why? Because trade and money are the first things people learn to talk about. Sometimes the money is legal,
sometimes not, but it’s all business.
I’ve tried to imagine what this region, stretching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, might be like in a hundred years,
more or less. New York and Los Angeles and Mexico City and Tokyo and Singapore and more, all linked and
stretched out from sea to sea, with individual towns and cities forming blobs and bulges along the wandering line like pearls
on a string. Some glistening, some dirty, all fascinating, as marketplaces invariably are.
Science-fiction writers don’t claim to predict the future. For one thing, we’re not especially good at it. But we’re sure
no worse than anyone else. One thing I
can
predict about new developments, whether they involve science, or sport, or religion, or art, or education, or anything else.
Sex, too.
In the future as in the present, if someone can make money off it, someone will.
So why don’t more science-fiction writers employ economics as the basis for their stories? More do than most people believe.
It’s just that the tenets are usually invisible behind the gloss of the tenants. Philosophy trails protagonists. Death rays
grab the reader’s attention fast, especially if they’re wielded by someone svelte, young, and preferably inadequately clad.
While reading such stories it sometimes occurs to me to wonder who designed, manufactured, and sold the death ray. Who’s paying
the shootist. What do those skimpy clothes cost. All of this is integral to the schematic of any future. It’s just that such
details are wont to find themselves abandoned by the wayside as the plot screams forward.
There are exceptions where the prime motivating force of money, cash, moolah, and credit are given their due. William Gibson,
the astute reader will quickly point out. Kudos to Bill for paying (no pun intended) attention to what really pushes people
forward through a frantic future (and plot). But who remembers the work of Mack Reynolds? Fewer than have kept company with
Poul Anderson’s Nicholas van Rijn, I expect.
Everyone’s a van Rijn to a great or lesser extent. Why should folks in the foreseeable future be any different? Morals intervene,
and other desires, but who wouldn’t sacrifice for a chance to be Scrooge McDuck? Not many science-fiction stories explain
how much simpler it would be to buy out one’s
enemy, or give them jobs, than to blow them away. War boosts short-term dividends, but in the long run it’s bad for business.
Interstellar war would be worse.
That’s why there was no Third World War, in case you didn’t know.
The Border’s a busy place now. It’s going to get busier in the immediate future. A
lot
busier. Strange things will happen there, and most of them, I expect, will orbit around money.
I’ve tried to give the matter some thought.
“
H
EY, Cardenas, don’t you retire today, man?”
“Chief’s got it in for you sure today.”
“Naw, he’s gonna fire Cardenas and promote the dog!”
He smiled as he walked past their desks, the laughter lapping against him in friendly, cool waves before falling away behind
him. Occasionally he replied, brief verbal jousts with those he knew well that left no one injured. He always gave as good
as he got. When you were the oldest sergeant on the force, not to mention the smallest, you had to expect a certain amount
of ribbing.
“Don’t sweat it, Charliebo,” he told his companion. “Good boy.”
At the mention of his name the German shepherd’s ears cocked forward and he looked up curiously. Same old Charliebo. The laughter
didn’t bother him. Nothing bothered him. That’s how he’d been trained and the years hadn’t changed him.
We’re both getting old, Cardenas thought. Jokes now, but in another year or two they’ll make me hang it up no matter
what. Then we double the time in front of the video,
hoh
Just you and me and the ol’ TV, dog. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. We could both use some rest. Though he had a hunch
the chief hadn’t called him in to talk about rest.
A visitor might’ve found the big dog’s presence in the ready room unusual, but not the Nogales cops. The dog had been Sergeant
Cardenas’s shadow for twelve years. For the first six he’d also been his eyes. Eyes that had been taken from him by a frightened
nineteen-year-old ninloco Cardenas had surprised in the process of rotoing an autofill outside a Tucson hydro station. Pocket
change. Pill credit.
Cardenas and his partner had slipped up on the kid without expecting anything more lethal than some angry words. The ninloco
had grabbed his pants and extracted an Ithaca spitter. The high-pocket twenty-gauge shattered Cardenas’s partner and made
jelly of the sergeant’s face. Backup told him that the ninloco had gone down giggling when they’d finally expiated him. His
blood analysis showed .12 spacebase and an endorphin-based expander. He was so high he should’ve flown away. Now he was a
memory.