ALAN FOSTER - the mocking program

Eventually, as he had suspected they would, his thoughts returned once more to the door at the back of the room, and to what might lie behind it and the pane of thick mirror glass. If it was nothing more than a simple storeroom, why prohibit entry to the custodian already entrusted with the key code to this secluded chamber?

It would probably take only a few seconds of his time to check out. Alongside the door handle was a small vertical slot designed to accept a simple, straightforward coded key. From his belt he once more pulled out the sesame, slapped it over the slot, flicked it to life, and waited. In less than thirty seconds the device ascertained the combination and applied it. There was a click. Trying the handle a second time, he found that the door opened easily toward him.

Too easily.

He found himself looking into a small antechamber perhaps two meters square. There were a pair of storage cabinets, a small office-sized refrigerator, and on the wall a small holovit showing a pink tile-roofed house in a tropical setting. Within the holovit, the moon was slowly rising, casting golden glimmers on the stream that ran left to right in front of the house. To Cardenas's immediate right, another door beckoned, temptingly ajar. Twisting and bending while remaining outside the antechamber, he found he could not see very much of the room beyond through the limited gap thus presented.

Worms and artful lures were designed to attract fish. Open doors invariably drew curious people. He had no intention of ending up gaffed and gutted in the presence of an obvious hook.

There appeared to be nothing to hinder his entry, which was exactly why he held back. After studying the antechamber for several minutes, he turned and strode back through the larger outer workplace and up the ramp. Seizing on the pair of old-fashioned mops he had seen during his earlier sojourn in the bathroom storage closet, he returned with them to stand once more before the door he had just unlocked. It stood ajar, exactly as he had left it.

Setting one of the mops aside, he grasped the other with one hand at the top and the other near the bottom. Holding it vertically, he pitched it into the antechamber.

There was a sudden flash of light that left multiple afterimages dancing on his retinas. Instantly and effortlessly sliced into sections, four pieces of mop clattered metallically to the floor.

Had he stepped unthinkingly into the alcove, there would just as efficiently, but considerably more messily, have been four pieces of him.

THUS STARKLY ENLIGHTENED, CARDENAS proceeded to reinspect the seemingly innocuous alcove.

He found two of what he was looking for concealed in the pair of cabinets, one hiding in the front door of the refrigerator, and the other artfully concealed behind the window of the house depicted in the holovit. Normally a brilliant crimson, the industrial lasers that had rendered the mop into instant scrap had been customized with canceling optics that nullified their conventional color without affecting their potency. Peering into the antechamber, a visitor saw nothing but empty air; stepping in, he would find himself sliced and diced without ever getting a chance to ascertain the cause.

There was no visible controlling switch, either for the harmless overhead lights or the rather less inoffensive optical sentinels that guarded the entrance to the room behind the inner portal. Intended to liberate him from minor inconveniences and allow him to enter locked rooms and boxes, his service belt offered nothing designed to cope with a sentry system quite this elaborate-or lethal.

After contemplating the unoccupied but deadly alcove, he turned and once more made his way back through the outer room and up the ramp. This time he did not stop in the bathroom storage closet. Selecting one of the two large wall mirrors that were installed above the bathroom's double sinks and utilizing the tools on his belt, he soon had it pried loose from the industrial adhesive that kept it fastened to the wall. Retracing his steps, he carefully set the mirror aside and picked up the remaining mop. Following the first into the antechamber, it suffered the same fate as its sacrificial predecessor.

Turning the mirror on its end yielded a reflective shield that was nearly, but not quite, as tall as Cardenas. Sacrificing the second mop had allowed him to memorize, albeit hastily and imperfectly, the angles at which the beams of the colorless lasers crisscrossed the alcove. Hunching down to keep as much of himself as possible behind the mirror, he carefully and slowly edged forward into the antechamber.

There was a single bang, followed by a strong smell of burnt paneling. Advancing at a snail's pace, he worked his way through the alcove, past the softly humming refrigerator and beneath the deceptively soothing holovit. Feeling the freely swinging lure of the inner door against his back, he pushed it open, stumbling slightly as he duck-walked through the now-unobstructed portal.

When he was as confident as he could be that he was beyond range of the invisible sentinels, he stood up and set the providential mirror aside. Deflected and reflected by the glass, the lasers had burned a pair of thumbnail-sized holes in the far wall of the antechamber and another two in the ceiling. The tiny black cavities smoked slightly and stank mightily, but he saw no flames, and no fire-detection alarms were sounding. This was not unexpected. Any place as important as this underwater redoubt would have been fabricated of fireproof and fire-retardant construction materials. It would take more than a little smoke to set off any integrated fire alarm system.

The room in which he found himself was dimly but adequately lit. To his left, a single holovit of open desert filled the entire wall. As he looked on, a three-dimensional Gila monster scuttled out from behind a woolly bear cactus to disappear behind a rock. Soaring from right to left, a Swainson's hawk cried out, its screech muted. Looking to his right, the Inspector saw the outer room, with its empty workstations and the bathroom closet ramp beyond, clearly through the high-quality one-way glass.

In front of him was a small work area dominated by a single comfortable chair and an idling box tunnel. On the otherwise empty desk, a vorec sat waiting in its holder. There was no keyboard for optional manual input. Below the subdued tunnel that appeared to run to a softly glowing infinity, the impassive glass eye of a scanner poked out of the wall. Hefting the bathroom mirror, Cardenas once more held it out in front of him as he approached the station and sat down in the chair. Nothing jumped out at him, and the chair did not blow up beneath his butt. Gratified but still vigilant, he examined the vorec carefully before removing it from its holder. It was a Pelurinho Amado 24. Expensive, multilingual rated, but with relatively straightforward controls, it was intended for a user who wanted the best available voice recognition technology but was not particularly technologically sophisticated. Flicking it active, he brought it to his lips.

"Open," he murmured softly into the discreetly padded pickup.

Words emerged from within the box tunnel as a dull inner light animated the scanner eye. "Access denied. Authorization required."

"Verbal?"

"Yes," the supple mechanical voice informed him.

Here was a simpler, and less lethal, problem to deal with than annulled lasers, Cardenas saw. Removing his service belt, he laid it out on the desk so he could more quickly and easily access its contents. While essential industrial mollys and boxes were usually defended by multiple layers of security, physically smaller and less significant ancillary devices-devices like vorecs-generally boasted less elaborate safeguards.