RICHARD LOFTON SMILED AS he moved, slowly, closer to Sands. “I haven’t changed much over the years, have I, Bennett?” He held both guns aimed at him.
“No, not much at all, Dick.” Sands’ lazgun was pointing at the newcomer.
“Don’t try anything funny, Cardigan,” warned Lofton, glancing quickly at him. “I look just like I did when you ordered me killed, don’t I, Bennett?”
Sands shook his head. “You know I had nothing to do with any attempt on your life.”
Lofton laughed. “Sure, you did, Bennett,” he said. “Hell, the guys you hired for the job told me all about it, right before they killed me. Did they report back to you? Give you all the details? See, what they did—and it amused the shit out of them when they told me their plans—they cut my body up into pieces. Out in the fucking jungle this was, you know, Bennett, so you can imagine—”
“What the hell are you talking about, Dick? You’re still alive and—”
“I’ve been making quite a name for myself, Bennett,” he said. “Lots of people, you included, thought I wouldn’t amount to much. But, shit, I’m famous.”
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“That’s because I’m famous under another name,” he explained. “I’m the Unknown Soldier.”
Sands said, “I don’t think I’ve heard of you.”
“Sure, you have. Fact is, some of your buddies have been imitating me. Isn’t that so, Cardigan?”
“Yeah. They tried to make Joseph Bouchon’s murder look like one of yours,” Jake answered. “They wanted to keep him from digging into their SuperTek operations.”
“They were assholes,” he said. “They didn’t come anywhere close to aping my style.”
“Richard, what we’ll have to do is sit down and talk, get everything settled between us,” suggested Sands. “Right now, as you can see, I have to settle with Cardigan.”
“Bennett, hey, you’ve got it all wrong.” Lofton walked a few paces closer to him. “I’m here, see, to settle a score with you. You’re the one we wanted to kill right at the start, except you were unreachable in that damn maxsec dump in California. So we started with some of the others.”
“Listen to reason,” said Sands. “I’m holding a lazgun myself. The odds are that—”
“Oh, c’mon, Bennett. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you kill me again,” he told him. “And before you do, I know I can gun you down. Of course, I’d like to be able to slice you up, but I won’t insist on—”
“Please,” said Kate. “Don’t do this. Bennett is perfectly willing to make a generous settlement with you. Aren’t you, Bennett?”
“Yes, of course. That would be much better than this foolish standoff, Richard.”
Lofton laughed again. “He doesn’t get it,” he said, shaking his head. “Tell him, Cardigan.”
“You really did succeed in killing Richard Lofton years ago in Brazil,” Jake explained. “It should be obvious to you by now, Sands, that what you’re talking to is a very creditable android.”
Sands narrowed his eyes, looking at Lofton. “An android,” he said quietly.
“That’s right, Bennett,” Lofton said. “See, androids don’t need money or flattery or any bullshit. I came up here to kill you, you poor son of a bitch.”
Kate suddenly lunged at the android, crying out, “No! I won’t let you kill him!”
Lofton slapped her aside with the hand holding the stungun.
At the same time Sands aimed and fired his lazgun.
But Lofton fired his lazgun, too.
The beam sliced a deep zigzag line down across the one-armed man’s chest.
Sands’ shot succeeded in chopping off both the android’s legs.
Kate, sobbing, ran to the tottering Sands.
Blood was spurting out of the deep rut in his chest. He dropped to his knees, and drops of blood went splattering all around him on the metallic floor.
Sands tried to speak, but blood came out of his mouth instead of words.
“Bennett, Bennett ... Kate put her arms around him, struggling to keep him from falling over.
“Damn,” muttered the fallen Lofton. “I still have five more to kill.” He ceased to function.
Dan took hold of Nancy’s hand. They stood there and watched her father die.
Jake didn’t get back to Greater Los Angeles until two days after Xmas.
His first afternoon there he went out to the edge of the Santa Monica Sector. He walked along a stretch of beach, stopping often to stare out at the pale blue ocean.
Gomez caught up with him there toward sundown. “May I trudge along with you, amigo?”
Jake shrugged and resumed walking.
His partner said, “I was just over talking to Bascom at Cosmos. We’ll be getting a bonus on the Bouchon case. Plus a handsome share of the eventual reward the IDCA is going to pay us for locating the SuperTek laboratory.”
Halting again, Jake looked out toward the horizon. “I’m getting old, Sid,” he said finally.
“I’ve noticed, sí. But, being a trusted chum, I haven’t mentioned it.”
“What I mean is—hell, when we were cops and finished up a case, I usually felt good about it.”
“Nobody would expect you to be overjoyed just now. Kate’s likely to go to prison; so is Professor Kittridge.”
“I probably knew all along that Kate was deeply mixed up in all this,” he said, “but I pretended she wasn’t.”
“Since you were expecting something like this, it probably didn’t hit you as hard as it might have.”
Jake commenced walking again. “Dan’s the one who was hit hard.”
“He’s tough, though.”
“Yeah, but still ...
“Hey, he’s nearly grown up. You have to quit trying to shelter him from the realities of life.”
“I was away too long while he was growing up. Up in the Freezer—maybe even before that—I wasn’t around enough.”
“Let’s switch to the topic of mañana,” suggested Gomez. “What’s he decided to do?”
“Dan’s going to stay in England until Nancy Sands is ready to move back to GLA—that shouldn’t be too far off,” answered Jake. “Then he’ll be coming back and living with me.”
“Bueno. That ought to be good for both of you,” he said. “Speaking of Great Britain, there’s still no word on the present whereabouts of Marj Lofton. Sundry law enforcers are beating the bushes for her.”
“She’s probably somewhere building another replica of her brother.”
“And how’s Beth faring?”
“She’s not especially saddened by her father’s arrest,” answered Jake. “She’ll be working up in Berkeley until the anti-Tek system is ready to use.”
“At which time you’ll get together again?”
“Yeah, probably sometime after the first of the year.”
“Well, that’s a fairly happy ending to this whole business,” his partner observed. “You and Dan together, you and Beth together—oh, and Natalie Dent and a reactivated Sidebar up at the Moonbase Colony covering a story for the next few weeks. Plus which, soon there’ll be no more Tek in the world.”
Jake said, “Something just as bad is sure to come along.”
“But in that short interval between troubles,” said Gomez, “we can enjoy ourselves, amigo.