Free Tek Money by William Shatner Page B

hydrangeas vanish. Only the long narrow holoplatform remained.
    Then, a few yards beyond the landing square, a decorative sundial began to flicker. It vanished completely in about fifteen seconds.
    Alert, gun ready, Jake, cautiously, approached the house.
    A side door stood open. Immediately inside a body lay, facedown, in the shadowy corridor.
    Carefully, Jake moved to it. “Android butler,” he realized while kneeling down next to it.
    Someone had used a heavy instrument on the mechanical man’s skull. It was dented, broken open in two places. Curls of colored wire and tiny plastiglass tubes had spilled out onto the plaztiles, along with a growing pool of thin ocean-blue lubricant.
    The big house was silent, and as Jake walked farther along the corridor the silence closed in around him.
    He found another dead android, a maid this time, sprawled in the highdomed living room. Otherwise, though, everything was in place. No furniture was overturned, not a single holovase had been knocked to the thermorug.
    The entire house was like that, all in order. Except for the central control computer on the basement level. There the entire house management and security system had been shut down. But unobtrusively and deftly, so that no alarm was given and no backup system took over.
    There was one other unusual thing about the dead house. Jake couldn’t find a trace of anyone’s having lived there. No personal effects at all. In one of the three second-level bedrooms he thought he noticed a faint trace of floral perfume, a scent he vaguely associated with the woman who’d told him she was Traynor’s sister.
    â€œThat’s not evidence of a damn thing,” he told himself.
    He made another slow circuit of the room, but there was nothing at all to be found.
    When he looked toward the doorway, he saw a thin young man, not quite twenty, standing timidly there and smiling at him. “I followed you here, Jake,” he explained in a mild, quiet voice. “I hope you don’t mind.” He held a battered black briefcase pressed close to his narrow chest.
    â€œDepends on who you are.” He still had his stungun in his hand.
    â€œWell, you don’t know my name. I’ve been careful about that.” The young man took a step into the bedroom. “After what happened today, though—I’m darned scared, Jake. They’re going to kill me next.”
    â€œAnd what happened today?”
    â€œYou don’t need that gun, Jake,” the young man told him. “You and I have worked together a lot over the past few years, but you never knew what I looked like. I’m Frank Bannett, Jr.”
    â€œDon’t know you.”
    â€œThat’s right, you were saying that just today out in the Palm Springs Sector.” He slid a hand inside the briefcase. “I’m the one who built Dillinger. We just did that tracing of Wes Flanders’s activities for you.”
    â€œOh, I see, yeah.”
    â€œBut this is getting too dangerous. They destroyed Dillinger and I’m afraid I’m next.” The young man came closer. “Here, let me show you something.” His hand went deeper into the briefcase.
    Jake grinned at him. He swung the stungun up and shot him square in the head.

14
    S HE WAS SLIM and pretty and her hair was a glowing golden blonde. Wearing a black skirtsuit, she was standing in the exact center of the high-domed living room, a glass of white wine in her left hand. “You’re home early, darling,” she said.
    All up above the clear oneway plastiglass ceiling of the beachside villa scores of white gulls were wheeling and turning in the oncoming dusk.
    Dennis Barragray hesitated in the doorway. “I’m worried, Jean.”
    Jean McCrea shrugged. “You’re always worried lately, darling.”
    He came into the room. “You’ve called me darling twice already.”
    She laughed. “And how do you interpret