Marlowe and the Spacewoman

by Ian M. Dudley

  “PDI?”

  A new avenue of investigation occurred to Marlowe. If Nina wasn’t from outer space, she was certainly doing a very good job of playing the part. If she had a PDI, or scars indicating she’d once had a PDI, the game would be up right away. He’d have to check that.

  “Personal Digital Implant.”

  “What on Earth is that?”

  She was really staying in character, and Marlowe grudgingly allowed himself to feel impressed. “A tiny computer implanted in the body, usually just behind and under the ear. It’s an organizer, a mail client, video recorder, fact-finder, spell-checker, and calculator, among other things. Comes in handy calculating the tip at restaurants. It’s wired into the CityNet, which is a network of all the PDIs and other computers within the City limits.”

  “Oh. I think I get it. And which city are we in?”

  Marlowe started up the car, toggling the set point to the next destination, which happened to be one of the reconstitution parlors. “The City.”

  “Yes, but which city? Oklahoma City? New York City? I know I came in over North America. Oh wait, is it San Francisco?”

  Marlowe turned and stared at her. He stared for so long she jumped out of her seat. “Hey, shouldn’t you watch where you’re driving?”

  “The car’s handling that. We just call it the City.”

  “Just ‘the City’?”

  “What else would you call it?”

  “But aren’t there other cities? For clarity, don’t you have to give each of them different names, so people know which city you’re talking about?”

  “First off, since almost no one leaves the City, there’s no question which city-state you’re talking about. Second, we don’t talk about the other cities. Not much, anyway. And on the rare occasions when we do, we call them by their names. Mirth City, Cabbage Town, Doldrumsburg, Narcoville. We don’t like the other city-states very much, especially Mirth City. They’re a real bunch of bastards.”

  “Did you say city-states?”

  Dawning fell on Marlowe like a wet blanket from ten stories. She was doing a really good job of staying in character. Such a good job, in fact, that he was starting to wonder if she was telling the truth. If she left Earth when she claimed she had, then the Big Fed was still running things on the North American continent. The Big Collapse hadn’t happened; the events of the Forced Repulsion and subsequent Cascading Secessions hadn’t occurred yet (damn those UES bastards and their meddling!).

  “OK, I guess a brief history lesson is in order. Unfortunately, history is not my forte. But I can have House beam a time line to your PDI.”

  “I don’t have a PDI.”

  She didn’t miss a beat. Well, it was worth a shot. “Then you’re stuck with my abbreviated and mostly accurate version.”

  Marlowe took a deep breath and cleared his head. They’d passed through the last of the Ministry of Policing checkpoints a minute earlier, so he found this relatively easy to do.

  “About eighty years ago, the UES rammed some new laws through the International Court. They had an agenda, but no one realized it at the time. They wanted to limit the spread of the power of the Big Fed, known at the time as the United States. One of the laws was the guaranteed human right of citizens of a city to vote to break away from a nation they no longer felt in sync with. It was in the tiny print of a little-heralded amendment to an obscure clause put forth by the French. Well, they were still French in those days, before the Germans annexed them.

  “Anyway, once it was international law, it applied to the Big Fed as well, which was the whole point. The UES wanted to splinter the Big Fed into tiny feuding fragments.”

  “I’m sorry, but what is the UES?”

  “Union of European States. But to their surprise, none of the major cities in the Big Fed took advantage of the clause, even after a huge marketing campaign. The only taker initially was San Fernando, which broke off from a city called Hollywood. A lot of people talked about exercising this right, but there was never enough people angry enough to actually get anywhere with it. Then the Last Straw happened.”

  “Last Straw?”

  “The Big Fed had been pretty evenly divided politically, and the election margins were always razor thin. The Last Straw started with the re-election of a very polarizing president. The results were very, very close, and the members of the losing party questioned the legitimacy of the results. They were so upset at his re-election that they started talking up secession. The successful secession of even a few major cities would have seriously undermined the power of not just the Big Fed, but the re-elected president as well. So his party launched a scare-tactic campaign, claiming secession would cripple the United States and that anyone for it wasn’t patriotic.

  Over the course of the next couple of years, the Big Fed president ushered in some pretty draconian anti-civil rights laws under the auspices of ‘fighting secessionism’. These laws went to further and further extremes, the Last Straw being the attempted deportation to Mexico of twelve thousand Big Fed citizens labeled secessionists. By coincidence, they also happened to be political opponents of the Big Fed president. Not only did this act anger the Mexicans, but it spawned a grassroots effort to undo the laws the Big Fed president had passed. A coalition of states got together and used the Secession Clause to force all the cities of the home state of the president out of the Big Fed. It was known as the Forced Repulsion. The plan was to invalidate his presidency by making him a foreigner.

  “The people of that state didn’t take kindly to this action, and sent agents out to all the major cities. Along with help from the UES, they managed to foment enough discontent to lead to the great Cascading Secessions, which effectively shattered the Big Fed. Oh, Washington tried to save itself. The First War of Reunification began. It ultimately failed, but one of the first acts of that war was the unleashing of biological warfare agents on the UES member states. The population of Europe was decimated, keeping them out of the war at home.

  “But the president of the Big Fed was experiencing a tremendously low approval rating at this point, and some civic-minded generals decided that the city-state model wasn’t so bad and overthrew him. The war ended with his death. Twenty years later the Second War of Reunification started, but this was shorter than the last, and ended with the Washington D.C. city-state, which had started the war in a bid to restore its once awesome power over the entire northern continent, being vaporized in a nuclear attack.”

  Marlowe’s gut clenched as he noticed a black Ministry of Policing flitter in the rear view mirror. He tried to ignore the surge of panic, and just kept his eye on the tailing vessel as he continued the history lesson.

  “Each city-state has been pretty much on its own since then. Each city expands its territory outward until checked by another city-state. Sometimes there are armed conflicts, most of the time a negotiated settlement is reached. The big corporations see to that, because war is bad for business. Except for the arms business, that is, but they’ve been pretty content lately with the sales generated by the mere fear of war with another city.”

  Nina sat quietly, taking this in as the buildings of the City began reasserting themselves on the landscape. “What about the Canadians? What did they do in all this?”

  “Who?”

  She tried another tack. “Mexico? South America?”

  “Well, the South American continent did attempt to get involved, trying to grab back territory they felt they had a historic claim to. The land bridge between the two continents-”

  “Central America?”

  “That sounds about right. Well, it was destroyed to prevent a large army from moving north.”

  “What, they widened the Panama Canal or something?”

  “No, as I was taught it, they carpet bombed the entire central portion of the continent with high yield, low rad nukes. Twelve thousand square kilometers were reverted to ocean.”

  “When did we switch to the metric system over here?”

>   “What other system is there?”

  “Never mind. My God, they prepared us for a multitude of different future paths, because of the projected length of our absence, but none of the possibilities included something as terrible as this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The City isn’t perfect, but I like it. I’m sure you’ll get used to it.”

  A piercing siren erupted from behind them. The menacing police flitter that had been not-so-discreetly following them came roaring up, gaining rapidly.

  “Ah, nuts,” said Marlowe. “House, anything obvious we’re doing that might explain the constable coming after us?”

  “I’m calculating probabilities. I do suggest, however, that you don’t add resisting arrest to any of the possible charges by not pulling over.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Nina.

  “Obedere’s work, no doubt. He’s looking for any excuse to arrest me and get you back into his clutches. House, any ideas? I’m having the car pull over.”

  “I’m reviewing the applicable laws for visitors. Hmm, I’ve had a thought. Ms. Minari has not been convicted of any crimes, correct?”

  “Not yet,” said Marlowe.

  “Excuse me,” said Nina, “but it’s really creepy to be on only one end of this conversation.”

  “Hold on, please, Nina. We’re in a serious situation right now. Where are you going with this, House?”

  “Well, technically, although her citizenship status is in question, she is still technically in good standing. Ipso facto-”

  “She should have a BB gun.”

  “Correct.”

  “Huh?” Nina again.

  “But that violation only results in a fine.”

  “True, but because of her citizenship status, Obedere would have an excuse to detain her until the fine is paid and her citizenship status is resolved. And if she’s found to be a non-citizen…”

  “Uh oh. Any non-citizen found violating City law is subject to execution.”

  “And you signed the custody paperwork acknowledging you would accept the same punishment she receives for crimes she commits while in your custody.”

  “Excuse me,” broke in Nina, “what are you talking about? Are you saying I could be executed because I don’t have a BB gun?”

  “What I’m saying,” replied Marlowe, “is that we could BOTH be executed because you don’t have a BB gun. House, what about the special powers assigned to me by the Governor?”

  “Investigatory powers only. They do not authorize you to operate outside the law.”

  “Then what good are they?”

  The car had taken its time stopping, a delaying tactic while Marlowe and House conferred. But it had stopped now, and the flitter with its blaring siren and strobing lights settled down right behind them.

  “House, if you have any ideas, now would be the time to throw them out.”

  “Do you still have your spare?”

  “Spare? Oh, my spare! Good thinking! Nina, pop open the glove box.”

  Marlowe kept one eye on the rear view mirror and another on Nina, which would have been a mean feat if he hadn’t had that roaming eye surgery a few years ago. The nano probes secreted all sort of chemicals to normalize his heartbeat as he watched the hatch pop open on the police flitter. The nano probes bumped up the dosage several milligrams as a huge, ham-fisted and barrel-chested trooper clambered out, his combat belt bristling with weaponry. The trooper wore the standard issue fear-inspiring black body armor with a mirror-visored riot helmet that extended down over his eyes and nose. Only his mouth was visible, a grim, malevolent sneer on his face as he spoke into his throat mike.

  “OK, what am I looking for in the glove box,” asked Nina.

  The trooper detached a particularly nasty-looking piece of ordnance from his holster and pointed it at their car. It took several, chest-tearing beats of Marlowe’s heart before he recognized it as a VID scanner and not a weapon. The trooper held the Vehicle Identity scanner up for several seconds as it captured an optical image of the Studebaker and sent an Identify query to the black box that all cars in the City were mandated to have. Tell-tales on the dashboard notified Marlowe that the car had answered the query, sending license, registration, and proof of insurance to the trooper.

  Marlowe returned his focus to the eye watching Nina. Her hand rested on the folded down door of the glove box. “Shove all the papers out.”

  She scooped all the papers onto her lap, then shoved them onto the floor.

  “OK, now what?”

  The trooper reholstered his VID scanner and started to swagger up to the car, his hand now resting on the butt of a plasma pistol jutting out of another holster. Marlowe kicked up the mag to read the trooper’s ID badge. It read “Maj. Biff,” a fuzzy gray stenciling over a deep black patch. Intentionally hard to read.

  “Push the bottom of the glove box down. A compartment will pop open in the back.”

  “OK, it’s open.”

  “Car, allow access.”

  The horn softly honked once.

  “Now reach in and pull out the gun.”

  Nina pulled out a squat, chrome-plated pistol. Her voice sounded relieved. “OK, I’ve got it.”

  Trooper Biff was at the back of the car now.

  “Good. Now reach in again, pull out the BB gun at the bottom of the compartment, and then return the illegal ion pistol you’re currently holding back in the compartment. Then close the glove box. And hurry, or he can legally shoot us both on sight.”

  “Crap!” Nina thrust her hand back into the glove box, grabbed the second gun, and shoved the first back in. She closed the glove box just as Trooper Biff tapped on Marlowe’s window.

  Marlowe reluctantly thumbed the window lever, rolling down the comforting protection of the polarized AntiProjectile armored plastiglass window. “Hi, constable. Is there a problem?”

  The officer leaned down, his chapped lips a flat slash of impatience. Marlowe found himself staring at his own reflection, which looked very uncomfortable and furtive.

  “What’s the matter? You look like you’re hiding something from me. Are you hiding something from me?” Trooper Biff’s gruff voice matched his physical appearance – mean, intimidating, and clearly not a voice to hide something from if you valued your continued good health and liberty.

  “No sir, constable. I’m not hiding anything. Just nervous, you know.”

  “Nervous?” The grim lips, if possible, tightened into an even narrower line. “If you’ve nothing to hide, why are you nervous?”

  He flipped up his mirrored visor in a slow, deliberate manner, revealing first a wide, crooked nose with a tuft of thick nasal hair billowing back and forth with each frosty, liver-and-onion scented breath, and then two nervous, familiar-looking faces staring back from a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He thrust a compact VID scanner into Marlowe’s face.

  “License and registration, please.”

  “I thought you already grabbed those from-”

  “Are you refusing to comply with my order?” Trooper Biff cracked what might have been the merest hint of an eager smile as his free hand went back to the butt of his plasma pistol.

  “No, sir, constable. License and registration, coming right up.” Marlowe’s sweaty hands ran over the control console built into the dash, initiating the requested transfer. The small scanner flashed a green light, which caused the trooper to frown with disappointment.

  “Right, everything here seems to be in order. It matches what your car sent over a moment ago.” Marlowe couldn’t see the trooper’s eyes, but he guessed that behind those mirrored lenses, a colossal battle to suppress his disappointment was being waged. A moment passed, and then trooper Biff regained his icy composure.

  “Any idea how fast you were going back there?”

  “50 kph. Got a repair weevil working on the car, couldn’t go any faster. And, according to the traffic beacon transmitting out here, that’s the posted speed limit.”

  The trooper paused, his
sallow face changing to a faint shade of red. “Good, just testing your, uh, situational awareness. Uh, good, glad you know. Just checking.” He stood there awkwardly for a second, possibly thinking. If it was thinking, it looked to Marlowe like it was slow going. It seemed that Marlowe’s deviation from the norm of terrified acquiescence had thrown the trooper off. Perhaps he wasn’t used to it. This suggested a new approach to dealing with the constable.

  “You know why I pulled you over?”

  Marlowe crossed his fingers, hoping this worked. “Not really, Major Biff, though if I had to guess, I’d say on the orders of CMP Obedere.”

  “That’s ri-” started Trooper Biff, only belatedly catching himself. “No. That’s not right. I pulled you over because we received an anonymous tip that there is a citizen in this vehicle who doesn’t have a BB gun.”

  Marlowe dropped his jaw in what he hoped was a suitable display of shock and disbelief. “A citizen without a BB gun! But that’s unthinkable. Let me assure you, Major Biff, that I would never be party to such a crime. Is there anything we can do to help clear this up?”

  “Actually, if you could both show me your BB guns, nice and slow, please.” He allowed himself a huge grin as he turned to Nina. “You first, ma’am.”

  He’d tensed up a bit, his grip on the butt of his pistol tightening. Nina looked a little flustered, patting down her pockets.

  “Where is that BB gun? I know I put it on this morning. Where did I put it?”

  Nina was either very perceptive, or very foolish. Marlowe hoped it was the former as he wiped sweaty hands on his seat cushion. Trooper Biff had drawn himself up to his full height. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step-”

  “Oh, here it is! Silly me! How did I miss that the first time?” Nina produced the BB gun, holding it out butt first towards Trooper Biff. The trooper, on the other hand, had started to pull his pistol out before the fact that Nina actually possessed the prerequisite BB gun registered. It flustered him as his pushed the pistol back into its holster.

  “Oh, uh, may I see that ma’am?”

  Nina extended the gun out further. Trooper Biff almost dropped it in Marlowe’s lap as he grasped it. He reddened at this, and covered for his embarrassment by taking a long time to examine the gun.