Alan Foster: Cyber Way

Moody didnt like leaving his car. In the patrol cruiser he felt safe and protected from an uncompromisingly hostile world, encased in armored flexan and carbonate, coddled by air conditioning, lunch, the drink dispenser, and as many other creature comforts as the department could pry out of the taxpayers by claiming they were vital to ongoing police operations. It was unfortunate, but every now and then he had to leave his office and get in the car, and less frequently, abandon the car to work in the real world. There were two real worlds as far as Moody was concerned: the one he worked in and the one he fled to as often as possible. All they had in common was that both were located on the same planet.

You had to leave the car to net outgrabed crazyboys, or interview witnesses, or check the backbays for waterstriders trying to run pharmecuties up from Koobah or Whackaragua. At least the waterstriders made life exciting, though things had quieted down some since Haiti had become a U.S. Territory, providing the DEA with an ideal base from which to monitor flights out of SudAm. There was a rumor the striders were using trained porpoises to bring the stuff right into the bay. The bastards never gave up. You could almost admire their persistence and ingenuity, until the first time you saw some eleven-year-old outgrabed on sizzle, standing over his dead six-year-old sister with a bloody kitchen knife in his hand, the familiar feral glaze in his eyes and that horrid unknowing grin on his face. A couple of encounters like that would kill any admiration for the striders.

Moody had suffered through more than a couple.

Nobody, including the Interdiction Corps, had actually found a porp running drugs. That didn’t mean they didn’t exist. Only that they hadn’t been caught. The detective wondered if you could hook a porp on pharmacuties. He wouldn’t put anything past a damn strider.

It was so very different from Mississippi. In many ways the Sip was much nicer than Flo-ree-dah: quieter, friendlier, laid-back and relaxed. Less need to flinch when someone approaching you on the street reached into his coat. It was also a helluva lot duller, he reminded himself. Which was why after graduating from the Academy he’d moved to the Greater Tampa area with his first wife. His appraisal of his prospects in West Florida had been borne out by quick advancement. He’d also lost his wife, married a second time, and lost her as well, along with the physical conditioning he’d acquired at the Academy.

Every year when the regular examinations came round he always managed to shed just enough poundage to scrape by, subsequent to which profuse ingestion of beer rapidly returned him to the rotund form to which his colleagues had become accustomed.

Another reason for his early move to Florida had been a misplaced desire for excitement and sophistication. What a letdown to discover that in a highly charged urban environment those were only euphemisms for more degenerate forms of crime. He stayed anyway.

He could have joined a Mississippi department but without ever enjoying the prospect of rapid and regular promotion, simply because there weren’t as many people to police. Nevertheless, he was surprised when he’d made detective. His background and lack of personality worked against him, not to mention the fact that he was no ass-kisser like half the kids in the department.

What he did have was a dogged, pit-bull persistence that insisted no case was unsolvable, no mystery too convoluted to crack. When others gave up, he persevered. Turn out to be right a few times in such matters and even disinterested higher-ups take notice. Apparently one or two had done just that. His was an attitude that would have been a hindrance on a SWAT team but which in a detective was a positive attribute.

Even after his unexpected promotion they rarely threw any of the glamour jobs his way. That suited Moody just fine. He didn’t like seeing his picture on the vid, because he took a lousy picture. If someone stuck a vocup in his face he became helplessly inarticulate. When not assigned to the street he actually enjoyed being stuck at a desk, accessing the mollys with his desk spinner, doing the tedious, boring, dirty bits of police work that never made the evening news. He abhorred publicity. If a vidwit showed up at the station asking questions about a case he happened to be involved with, Moody always managed to find a colleague willing to usurp his place in the spotlight. No wonder his fellow officers loved him.

An officer who actually enjoyed mollywork was an invaluable component of whatever police department happened to be fortunate enough to have the use of his services. Moody knew he could have hooked on with any department in the country. Maybe that was why he’d received the unexpected promotion. No matter. He was comfortable enough in Greater Tampa, just a good ol’ Southern boy with maybe a few more brains than his buddies back home and a few less than some of the men and women he worked with daily.

Whatever they thought of him privately, none of them ever called him out in public. Because if you were caught making fun of Vernon Moody, why then when you needed his services he might decline to sit down and do the weeks of tedious research vital to your case. Moody’s work had probably been responsible for more promotions than any other single factor in the department. So if any of his fellow cops laughed at his background or his girth, they did so well behind his back.

Only the insecure were guilty of that. The majority respected Moody and his abilities. He socialized readily if quietly, and had made a few casual friends—easygoing types like himself. He wasn’t the only one in the department content to parlay his off-time into a few beers, a ball game, fishing trips to the Glades, or the company of women not too much younger than himself. In a department aswarm with ambitious hares, the presence of a happy tortoise or two was more than welcome.

It helped too that Moody’s appearance was not threatening. He looked fat, slow, and stupid. Striders and ninlocos had discovered to their dismay that in the detective’s case, appearances were more than slightly deceiving.

Despite his usefulness on the street, he much preferred spending his time at his desk, sieving the departmental molly spheres, researching and preparing reports. You didn’t have to be smart to use a spinner. Just persistent and good at following directions. The ability to follow directions had extracted him from a dirt-poor existence in Mississippi, had made him a detective on the largest police force in Florida. He enjoyed the respect of his peers, the admiration of the folks back home, a decent income, and the prospect of a comfortable retirement if some nameless crazyboy didn’t someday expunge his guts on a filthy downtown back street.

None of that could help him now. No vehicles were allowed on Steel Key, not even those representing municipal authorities. The call which had come in demanded that he leave his office. Now he was forced to abandon his beloved cruiser as well.

Was a time when there’d been no barrier islands between Honeymoon Key and the Anclote Refuge. Then the gulf waters had been forced to make way for Steel, Steadman, Briarwood, and Cypress Keys. Artificial islets all, built of fill dredged from the gulf bottom and fortified with vitamins and minerals. Not to mention polycrete and titanium. Rich imported soil from the mainland provided regular employment for a small army of gardeners, and Bahamanian sand fringed each island like vanilla cream on a wedding cake.

There were no bridges to the artificial keys. Instead they were connected to the mainland and to one another by a tube which ran from Steel to just south of Tarpon Springs. Though fragile in appearance, the tube was in fact far more stable and secure than any roadway. Come a hurricane, Moody would much rather be trapped on artificial Briarwood than organic Caladesi. The latter was composed solely of natural materials, and no matter what the ecoengineers said, he’d take titanium over pulverized coral any day.