He shook his head. "Jus' th'two. Get others back."
"You mean they're snatched and then returned to you?"
"Drop off where snatchee."
This was making less and less sense.
"Unhurt?"
B.B. shook his head vehemently. "No! N'same. Eve af back, still gone. Dull, dumb, stupee, bent."
Now I understood. Whoever was snatching the little urches was returning damaged goods. That was why B.B. had been so sure we'd find drugs in the post-mortem report.
"So you think they're being dosed up and — what?"
He shrugged. "D'know. Can't tell. N'good sure."
"No signs of…abuse?"
Thought of my own daughter. For perhaps the first time since Maggs had spirited her away, I was glad Lynnie was out among the Outworlds.
"Nup," he said, shaking his head. "Checked by Wendy. Sh'say bods okay, b'heads f'blungit."
"Who 'round Sol is this Wendy? She a doctor or something?"
B.B. was suddenly flustered. "Sh'Mom. D'worry. Sh'know. An'way, kids get better, b'ver' slow. Weeks."
They're returned slow and stupid but get better with time. Sure sounded like a drug to me. This was getting stranger and stranger. Little urches snatched and returned, physically okay, but dosed up on something. To what end? Maybe just dosed up and posed? Or maybe overdosed on purpose so they couldn't talk afterwards? But why bother with such elaborate precautions? Urchins had no legal existence. They couldn't bring charges or testify against anyone. So why coagulate their minds before returning them?
Why return them at all?
"How many days were the two dead kids missing?"
He thought a moment, then said, "Oldee three, youngee four."
Missing three to four days — were they so gelled on something that they walked right off the outer walkway? No, wait: No trace of foreign chemicals or toxins in their systems.
My own mind was beginning to feel a bit gelled.
"Post-mort said they were clean."
He looked at me as if I were stupid. "Druggee-druggee!"
Maybe he was right. Suddenly had an idea.
"Come on," I said, pulling him toward the chute up to the tube level. "We're heading uptown."
— 8-
Boedekker North was the biggest thing in the Danbury borough — too big for a holographic dress-up. It towered above everything around it like a giant stack of rice cakes on an empty table. We tubed into the midsection and hunted up a directory.
"Lookee, san?" When I glared at him, he sighed and said, "What we looking for?"
"A pharmaceutical company."
"Farmers — ?"
"No. Pharmaceutical. As in 'pharmacy.' They make drugs. You know — medicines?" He gave me a puzzled look. "Wait," I told him. "You'll see."
Had a brainstorm. Suppose somebody was using the kids as lab specimens to give some new drug a clinical trial? Something so new and unique that the coroner's analyzers wouldn't spot it? Suppose this new drug backfired? And suppose the testers weren't prepared to house the damaged kids? What would they do with them?
Send them back where they came from, of course. That would take the kids off their hands and allow the researcher to observe the longterm effects of their botched trial.
Urchins as human lab rats. What a wonderful world.
There were a few bugs in my scenario but it fit most of the facts. A little more information and I was sure I could fill in the empty spaces.
"Sh'tell more," B.B. said as we sorted through the midlevel directory's stores and services.
Gave him a sidelong look. "What else you been holding out on me?"
"N'hold, san — " He stopped and cleared his throat. "Not hold out. Jus' membered. Saw comet side of flit snatchee lil Jo."
"Why didn't you tell me this before!" It would have made things so much easier!
He shrugged. "Din think — "
"Never mind. What color was it? Red, yellow?"
"Pointy silvee star w'long silvee tail."
"Any words?"
He shrugged again.
Right. Remembered he couldn't read. No matter. Starting to get real excited about this case. A stylized comet in silver. Obviously a company logo. Now we were getting somewhere.
Or so I thought.
Boedekker North housed thousands of lessees. We sorted through the entire midsection directory and looked up every single firm or store that might conceivably have anything at all to do with drugs, medicine, research, doctors, even kids. Then we ran a match search to see if any of these had a silver comet in their logo.
No match.
Another run looking for the word "star" or "comet" or "meteor" or any celestial body associated with their company name.
No match.
So we searched for any company name that contained any reference to outer space. Even checked out names related to speed. We found quite a few, but none of them had a silver comet for a logo.
We came up equally empty on the top-section and under-section directories.
The hours had slipped by. It was dark out. We found a roving soyvlaki cart and I treated B.B. to a couple. He wolfed them down as we sat and watched a lot of the workers head home for the night.
"Howc y'don work l'them?"
"You mean a steady day job?"
He nodded.
Thought about that. Maggs had asked me the same question maybe a million times during our marriage. Couldn't come up with a new answer on the spot so I gave him the stock reply: "Too much like being a robot."
He gave me a strange look so I explained.
"You know — everything on a schedule. Be here now, get there then, do this before lunch, do that before you go home. A regimented existence. Not for me. Like to make my own hours, be my own boss, go where I want, when I want. Work for myself, not some big corporation. Be a corportion of one."
He gave me a halfhearted nod, like he wasn't really convinced. Couldn't believe it. An urch who'd lived by his wits all his life — how could he have the slightest doubt?
"Don't tell me you'd want to be like them!"
He watched the scurrying workers with big round wistful eyes. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and I could barely hear his voice:
"Love it."
Couldn't fathom that at all. Struck me speechless for a moment. Then I understood.
Here I was talking about bucking the system to a kid who'd have to spend his entire life scratching out an existence in the shadow economy, who would never get a hand on the bottom rung of the system's ladder no matter how hard he wished, hoped, or tried. From where he was, that bottom rung looked like heaven.
Somebody should have come by then and daubed my face white, painted my nose red, and turned on a calliope. What a clown, I was. An idiot clown.
Suddenly my appetite was gone. Offered the kid my second soyvlaki. He took it but ate it slowly.
When he was finished he said, "Where fr'mere?"
Wasn't sure. Tired. Knew we weren't finished here at Boedekker North, but didn't want to go back to Brooklyn tonight and have to tube up here again in the morning. Wanted to milk this trip.
"Back to the directories," I told him. "We're going to go through the midsection firm by firm and look at every logo of every lessee in Boedekker North until we find something that looks like a comet."
"Cou b'wrong," he said.
"About the comet? Don't think that hasn't occurred to me. That's why you aren't going home till I do."
We seated ourselves at the directory console, queued up the ads of each lessee in alpabetical order, and let them run in the holochamber. Started getting bleary along about "J" and was nodding around "M". Suddenly B.B. was yanking on my sleeve.
"It, san!" He was bouncing in his seat and pointing at the chamber. "It! It!"
Opened my eyes and stared at the holo. Felt my blood run cold at sight of the name: