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shifted back to the girl. "You couldn't."
"I didn't have to." Gagrito grinned. "Somebody gave them to me."
Some of the color left Okolona's face. "Only half a dozen people have access
to the encoding sequence, and you wouldn't have anything they'd want badly
enough to trade for it."
"He did." With great delight the girl pointed to the man sitting on the far
end of the couch.
Okolona gaped at him, then slumped slightly. "It's true, isn't it? She's
telling the truth. Why?"
"Because I gave him what he wanted," the girl declared triumphantly when Ramon
declined to respond. "I gave him everything he wanted. Did you think he was so
fine, so pure? Isn't the fact that he was interested in you proof enough to
the contrary? You're old. Well preserved, as well preserved as money can
preserve, but under all the attitudes and work and experience you're old. Too
old to satisfy him all the time. I'm not, and your boyfriend, well, while he
made it clear that you were his main foodline, he wasn't averse to availing
himself of a little willing young stuff on the side."
For the first time Okolona's composure was shaken. "You gave her the coding
sequence for the controllers?"
"I didn't think it would do any harm." Ramon was on the verge of babbling.
"She obviously wasn't an industrial spy. She said she just wanted it for
herself, to fool around with, that it would help her with her hobby. She
showed me the suit, told me what it was for, what she was trying to do with
it. She said the coding sequence would help with some algorithms, whatever
those are. I didn't see the harm -"
"You didn't see& ?" Okolona lowered her voice. "You didn't see. Of course you
didn't."
"Isn't that what you always told me?" Gagrito paced the floor like some
gangly, predatory bird. "That to get what you wanted, to achieve your goals,
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you had to do whatever was necessary, give up whatever was required?"
"I never meant& "
"Just like you never meant to kill Squirt." The trembling in the girl's voice
belied something deep, Cardenas sensed. Very deep.
"You two know each other," he said flatly. It more than explained how she'd
been able to gain entrance to the mansion.
The girl whirled on him, her expression a maelstrom of fury and revulsion.
"She's my goddamn mother, frion. I had a cat once, a long time ago. A long,
long time ago. A cat and a father. She killed them both."
Okolona's voice rose, shaky but still vibrant. "Your father died of a heart
condition!"
"Which you aggravated; pushing him, driving him, always reaching, always
striving, always. You didn't just help him into an early grave; you shoved him
in."
"He wanted success as much as I did! He wanted Neurologic!"
"You wanted Neurologic," the girl snarled. "Daddy wanted food, and a roof over
our heads, and maybe, eventually, some recognition for all his years of
slaving. But that wasn't good enough for you. You had to be on top. You had to
be bitch queen of neuronics, a duchess of the Strip. So you kept pushing him,
and pushing him, and finally he just gave up and died. It was a way out.
"And Squirt. Why'd you have to take my cat?" She was crying now, crying and
accusing all at once. "Why couldn't you have found some other animal to try
your damn rotten stinking controller on?"
"That was an accident. I've explained it to you over and over. An accident. It
should have worked perfectly. It had been tested repeatedly. I thought you'd
like Squirt better after it was done, thought you'd be pleased and surprised
with what she could do. The only cat in the world who could do such things.
The only one."
"I just wanted a cat!" Gagrito screamed. "My cat! Squirt. An ordinary, smelly,
warm, furry cat. Not something that could do highwire tricks and navigate the
fucking car. Just a cat. And you killed that. Squirt wasn't good enough for
you the way she was. You had to try and improve her. Like you had to try and
improve everything and everybody else."
"I did it for you," Okolona insisted. "It didn't work out, it was a tragedy,
that cat, but I did it for you."
"Mierde, you never did anything for anybody in your life except yourself. You
were always improving things. Nothing was ever good enough." She grinned
nastily then, and her expression bore more than a little in common with the
dead jaguar's. "I learned a lot from you. I studied real hard. I
designed this suit, and Twotrick helped a great deal. They threw him out of
medical school, and we found each other, and he helped. I can make
improvements, too!"
Cardenas tensed as she touched a switch on her sleeve. But no animals leaped
into the room, no big cats, no large fanged dogs, no poisonous snakes or
hulking bears.
On the far end of the couch, Ramon twitched. His eyes became small moons.
Gagrito raised her right hand, clenched the fingers into a fist. Ramon
mimicked the gesture, gazing in horror at his own, out-of-control extremities.
He gaped at her. "What& Nilaa& what?"
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