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switch among the many on her right sleeve. Almost instantly the jaguar was on
its feet, alert and awake.
The girl raised her left arm. The jaguar mimicked the gesture perfectly with
its left foreleg. She made a circle with her hand in the air. So did the big
cat. When she tilted her head to one side, the animal did likewise. When she
took a swipe in Cardenas's direction, he felt the simultaneous whoosh of air
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as the cat's claws missed him by centimeters.
"I don't work through chips," she told him proudly. "I've got a steady-state
broadcast unit in the suit that records the actions of my muscles. The
animal's controller receives the information and transposes my movements
accordingly. My suit reads my movements and gestures and conveys them to the
broadcast unit, which passes the action digitally to the Neurologic controller
in the animal, which matches my movements gesture for gesture. Unlike in the
old paraplegic outfits, the stim filaments in my suit are coded for pickup,
not distribution."
"Pretty clever," Cardenas admitted. "So the animals are only imitating your
movements, your gestures, and not reacting to some embedded program."
"That's it, frion."
"So they haven't killed anyone. You have."
Her smiled vanished. "You're awfully stupid for such an old cop, but then you
were awfully stupid for coming here in the first place. You still haven't
answered my question." She straightened and grabbed for him. The jaguar rose
on its hind legs and wrapped a paw around Cardenas's right hand. "Tell me, or
I'll have Chimu pull off your fingers one at a time."
He could feel the pressure, as if his hand had been encased in a heated vise.'
'Take it easy. What difference does it make?"
She approached and pushed her face close to his own. The jaguar was right next
to her, its fangs wet and sharp. "That's my business." She touched a control
and when her hands started going through his pockets, the jaguar did not mimic
the gestures.
She found his wallet, which she tossed to the tall boy, and his police vorec,
which she gave to the shorter one. Eventually she found the slip of paper
containing the directions.
"Mira this, Twotrick." The tall boy took the paper.
"Mierdel Okolona letterhead." He wadded the paper into a ball and threw it
aside.
"I guess I'm not surprised. It's my fault. I should've expected it." Her hands
balled into tiny fists.
Cardenas felt the bones in his fingers grinding together as the jaguar's paw
contracted. He wanted to scream but clenched his teeth and sucked it in.
"No more of this," she muttered. She looked and sounded suddenly tired. "No
more."
"Hey, Gagrito!" The shorter boy looked up from where he'd been playing with
Cardenas's vorec. "You ain't giving up, are you? The game's just getting good
and started."
"Ball it, Gluey," she shot back. "It's no fun if they know. But we can still
endgame, verdadV The shorter boy jammed the vorec in his pocket as he hopped
off the bed, nodding eagerly.
When she looked back at Cardenas there was a horrific blankness in her eyes,
as if he were no longer there. He knew that look but had never encountered it
before on the face of one quite so young.
"We're leaving." Her voice had grown distant, surreal. "You can stay and keep
Chimu company."
"Now wait -"
She held up her balled fist and he winced at the increased pressure on his
hand. "My range is about twenty meters. As soon as we're on our way down in
the elevator the connection will be broken. Then Chimu will be on his own. So
will you."
They left hurriedly, Gluey favoring Cardenas with a last nervous giggle as he
shut the door behind him. The sergeant stood there gazing at the jaguar, his
right hand throbbing with pain in the animal's grip. It could be counted on to
react suddenly and instinctively when the girl's control was released.
Striking at its eyes might buy him a second or two, Cardenas thought tensely.
Probably the three ninlocos were already stepping into the battered, rickety
elevator. He had only seconds left in which to do something, anything.
The jaguar's posture, standing erect on its hind legs, was completely foreign
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to the animal. For the moment it was being ordered to hold on to him, and that
was all.
So he kicked it as hard as he could between its hind legs.
The gesture was remarkably productive. The paw clutching his right hand let go
and the animal dropped and rolled onto its back. Cardenas sprang for the door
and wrenched at the handle as the big cat yowled thunderously behind him. The
handle wouldn't budge.
They'd locked it from the outside.
Already the jaguar was scrambling back onto its feet. Having previously been
introduced to the taste of human flesh Cardenas doubted it would stop with
just killing him. Not that the final disposition of his corpus would matter to
him once he'd been eviscerated. He looked around wildly, then sprinted to his
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