Steven Spielberg's Innerspace

by Nathan Elliott

  Jack hurried across to the car and climbed in.

  The engine fired first time. Jack, under Tuck’s urging, gave it full throttle, and they roared away from the lab and turned on to the freeway.

  As soon as the lab was out of sight, Jack said, ‘I did what you asked.’

  ‘I’m grateful, believe me,’ Tuck replied.

  ‘Now I want something in return.’

  ‘Okay. What’s the deal?’

  ‘No hurting.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘That’s what I want from you. No hurting.'

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Don’t do anything weird in there. Don’t cause an embolism. Or an aneurysm. Or anything else with a funny-sounding name. And stay clear of the brain and the spinal cord - I could end up crippled for life.’

  Jack was clutching the steering wheel rigidly with both hands, and it was obvious to Tuck how tense and uptight he was. Tuck found Jack curiously amusing.

  ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘No hurting. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Jack drove on in silence for a while, keeping up his speed and dodging past slower-moving cars.

  ‘What’s it like in there, anyway?’ he asked.

  Tuck peered out through the dome. The searchlights provided two patches of illumination which revealed the glistening, pinkish linings of Jack’s innards which had already become almost familiar to Tuck. It was strange how you could get used to the weirdest of things simply because you had to.

  ‘It’s dark,’ Tuck told Jack. ‘Like moving through a lot of wet, slimy caverns that throb and pulse - ’

  ‘Forget it!’ Jack said hastily. ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

  Tuck saw Jack preparing to overtake a heavy truck.

  ‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘Watch out! Give that baby plenty of room, will you?’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Jack. ‘I am a licensed driver, you know.’

  He overtook the truck without difficulty.

  ‘Just don’t want the merchandise damaged,’ Tuck told him. ‘This car’s a classic.’ Then a note of sad confession entered his voice: it’s the only thing I own that isn’t crap.’

  Unseen by both Jack and Tuck, a black Mercedes was on their tail. It kept its distance as Jack turned off the freeway. Following Tuck’s instructions, Jack finally pulled up outside Tuck’s apartment.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jack. ‘You’ve got a great view of the Bay.’

  ‘Never mind the view,’ said Tuck. ‘Let’s get inside.’

  On entering the apartment, Jack gazed with dismay the disorder in the living room. He kept his own reasonably neat, and this was a mess in comparison.

  ‘Is this where you live?’ he said, almost as if the matter was in doubt.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tuck said defensively. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Oh nothing,’ Jack said hastily, it looks very comfortable . . .’

  ‘I call it user-friendly,’ Tuck said. ‘I know where everything is.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Jack murmured. He spotted the mechanical arm, picked it up and began to play with it. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Tuck. It felt strange to arrive home in someone else’s body. Looking at the place through Jack’s eyes somehow made him realize just what a mess it looked to outsiders and he felt a bit ashamed of his slovenly habits.

  ‘I could use a drink right now,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ Jack sounded surprised. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Don’t say that. I need a drink, and that means you gotta take it for me. That’s part of the arrangement.’

  He heard Jack sigh. ‘Where do you keep it?’

  ‘Look under the sofa cushion,’ Tuck told him. ‘See if there’s a bottle of Cutty Sark there, would ya?’ Obediently Jack checked under the cushion and found the bottle.

  ‘Great!’ said Tuck. ‘Okay, here’s what you do. Just take a nice big tug on that baby and let me do the rest.’ Tuck was already taking the pod right up to the top of Jack’s throat. He had emptied the acid from the flask and rinsed it with his water supply. This time he was going to get the liquor before it got mixed up with Jack’s digestive juices.

  He extended one of the pod’s mechanical arms, the empty flask grasped between its claws, top off. Tuck peered through the viewing dome, checking that the arm and the flask were properly in place.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he said to Jack.

  ‘I'm ready.’

  ‘Okay - down the hatch.’

  He saw Jack pausing to wipe the mouth of the bottle with his handkerchief.

  ‘Do I really have to do this?’ he asked.

  ‘Come on!’ said Tuck. ‘I need it!’

  ‘I’m not much of a drinker,’ Jack told him, ‘but here goes . . .’

  Tuck saw the bottle being raised to Jack’s lips a second or so before the amber liquid came gushing -Through the space under his dangling epiglottis. Once again the pod was buffeted by the swirling current, and once again it went plunging down in the dark recesses of Jack’s throat, rolling and bumping as it went.

  This time, Tuck was ready for the ride. He was firmly strapped into his seat, and had his finger on the claw-retraction controls. He hit the controls immediately, and the arm retracted. By the time the pod came to rest in Jack’s stomach, the claw and flask had slid into the pod through the air-lock opening.

  Jack eagerly grabbed the flask and sloshed it around under his nose as before. This time, it smelt just right. He threw back a big mouthful, swallowed.

  The liquid burned down his throat like napalm, but it was the real thing, unadulterated by any of Jack’s gastric juices. Tuck gasped with surprise at the sheer strength of it. He pounded his fist against the edge of the console and made a complete turn in his swivel chair.

  Then he took another belt from the flask.

  Savouring the second mouthful, Tuck looked up at the monitor. Jack was studying the label of the bottle and saying, ‘Hey, this stuff’s not bad. It relaxes you.’

  Then he took another swig.

  Tuck sat with his feet up on the console of the pod, tapping his toes together and taking shots of whisky from the flask as Sam Cooke sang ‘Twistin’ the Night Away’. He had brought a selection of his favourite tapes aboard the pod, and ‘Sam Cooke’s Greatest Hits’ was perhaps his favourite of all. The liquor had had the desired effect: he felt mellow, at peace with himself.

  Jack, too, was also having fun. The music was playing in his head as if he had a pair of ear-phones on, and he was singing along and actually twisting around Tuck’s apartment, weaving occasionally to avoid the bits of motorcycle that lay on the floor. The bottle of Cutty Sark was empty.

  ‘I never knew that dancing could be this much fun,’ he remarked.

  ‘Try it with a girl some time,’ Tuck said to him.

  Jack dodged an exhaust pipe and spotted a framed photograph of an attractive fair-haired woman on the table.

  ‘Someone like this maybe,’ he said, picking the photograph up and peering at it.

  Tuck, suddenly confronted with Lydia’s face, felt a deep pang of regret. He had not seen or heard from Lydia since she had walked out of the apartment a month ago.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Somebody like that.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Her name’s Lydia Maxwell. She’s a reporter.’

  ‘You two going out together?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ Tuck said firmly. ‘I may be stuck in your body, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you all the details of my private life.’

  Jack didn’t pursue the subject. He flopped on to the sofa, feeling pleasantly calm and philosophical for once.

  ‘It’s incredible, isn’t it?’ he remarked. ‘You’re seeing parts of my body I’ll never get to see.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Tuck said, ‘you aren’t missing much.’

  ‘The gastric mucosa,’ Jack went on, as if he hadn’t heard him, ‘intestinal villi, pulmonary alveoli.’ Jack stifle
d a burp. ‘Far-away places with strange sounding names.’

  Tuck began to wonder about Jack. For an ordinary guy like him to know such medical terms must mean that he had a fascination with the workings of the human body. And from what he already knew of Jack, it was a morbid fascination.

  ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘Go look in the mirror for me, will you?’

  Jack was still wrapped in wonder at the idea of Tuck being shrunken inside him.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I just realized I don’t know what you look like,’ Tuck said. ‘I mean, from the outside.'

  With some difficulty, Jack managed to raise himself up from the sofa. The room seemed to wobble around him. He managed to stagger over to the mirror on the wall and peer into it blearily.

  Tuck took one look at his face and he knew they were in trouble. Even relaxed by the whisky, he looked harrassed and hyper-sensitive.

  ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘We’re gonna need more help.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Can you drive?’

  ‘Of course I can drive. You saw me doing it earlier.’

  ‘No - I mean, are you fit to drive? Are you sober enough?’

  ‘Sure I am,’ Jack said brazenly. He took a step forward as if to prove to Jack that he could walk in a straight line, but the step swiftly turned into a stagger, and he almost collapsed on to the sofa.

  ‘Make some coffee,’ Tuck said urgently. ‘Make it quick and make it very, very strong.’

  Chapter 7

  Lydia Maxwell sat on the corner of her desk in the press room, conferring with her editor, Harry Paxton. Harry leaned back in his chair, a sceptical expression on his face.

  ‘“Espionage in Silicon Valley,”’ he quoted. ‘“The Buying and Selling of Advanced Technology”.’ He sucked on his teeth, it sounded like Sunday Supplement stuff to me then, and that’s how it sounds to me now. I know you’ve been on the tail of this story for weeks, Lydia, but I’ve still got nothing concrete. Maybe we’ll have to wait until people start getting murdered. Then we might be able to print something.’

  ‘People are getting murdered,’ Lydia was quick to reply. ‘A scientist named Ozzie Wexler - he was gunned down this morning in a shopping mall. Nobody saw who did it.’

  Harry sat up in his chair, at last beginning to take her seriously. ‘What do you know about this guy Wexler?’

  ‘A bit more than the police. I’ve been doing some checking. He worked for a lab called Vectorscope. It’s located near the mall.

  ‘Something got stolen, maybe?’ said a third voice.

  It was Duane Flornoy, a close colleague of Lydia’s. He leaned across the desk.

  ‘I don’t know Duane,’ Lydia said. ‘Vectorscope’s buttoned up as tight as a drum, and I haven’t been able to get anything out of them. Why do you ask?’

  Flornoy made a movement of someone drawing imaginary guns from belt holsters.

  ‘The Cowboy,' he said dramatically.

  Lydia peered at him, wide-eyed, is he in town?’

  ‘The Cowboy?’ said Harry. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s on his way right now,’ Flornoy told Lydia. He glanced at the notepad which he had put down on the desk. ‘TWA flight 607, arriving San Francisco International five o’clock this afternoon. I checked.’

  ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ Harry insisted.

  Lydia was intrigued. ‘He’s a fence,’ she told her editor. ‘He works out of the Middle East, but he likes to dress Wild West style. He specializes in trips to the States, buying the latest technology from anyone who’ll sell and then taking it back to his masters at home. Nobody’s really sure who he works for, only that they’re not a very pleasant lot. He’s tough. Very, very tough. I’ve heard some amazing stories about him.’

  ‘You make him sound like Superman,’ Harry remarked.

  Lydia tapped a pencil thoughtfully against her lips. ‘That may not be so far from the mark,’ she observed.

  The pilot of the aircraft had already begun his descent, and the stewardess moved purposefully down the central corridor, checking that everyone was securely belted in. Then she spotted clouds of blue smoke coming from a seat at the rear of the plane. She hastened forward.

  A big, swarthy man was sitting there, dressed in a white felt Stetson hat, a suede Western sports coat over a bib-front shirt and blue jeans tucked into fancy snakeskin cowboy boots. He was reading a foreign edition of People magazine while puffing on a fat cigar. The mild-mannered man sitting next to him was unsuccessfully trying to fan the smoke away from his face.

  The stewardess knelt beside the man, giving him her best professional smile.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘We’ve already begun our descent.’

  ‘So?’

  The word came out blunt and thickly accented. The stewardess broadened her smile and said, ‘You’ll have to extinguish your cigar.’

  For a moment the man did nothing. For a moment the stewardess entertained the horrible thought that he was going to stub it in her face. Then a smile broke out on his rugged features. It was not a pleasant smile, more a grimace.

  Then, to her amazement, he crushed out the cigar in the palm of his hand, without flinching, without a flicker of change in his expression.

  Jack was approaching the newspaper offices in the car when Tuck spotted Lydia emerging from the main entrance.

  ‘There she is!’ he called.

  ‘Where?’ said Jack.

  Lydia had already been swallowed up by the crowd on the sidewalk. She looked as if she was in a big hurry.

  ‘She just came out of the building,’ Tuck said. ‘Quick! She’s getting away. Honk the horn!’

  Jack obliged. The horn made a tootling noise quite unlike any he had ever heard before. The sound was so distinctive that Jack wasn’t surprised to see Lydia emerge from the crowd. He recognized her immediately from her photograph. The sun shone gold on her hair and her eyes were bright.

  Jack had pulled the Mustang over to the kerb, and he hastily wound down the window as Lydia approached. She looked gorgeous, and when she leant into the car he could smell an expensive perfume that made him want to throw his arms around her. But she was frowning.

  ‘I know this car,’ she said to him. ‘This car belongs to Tuck Pendelton.’

  Jack nodded like a broken-backed doll. ‘Right,’ he managed to say.

  ‘So what are you doing driving it?’ she wanted to know. ‘Tuck would sooner trust somebody with his life than with his car.’

  Jack tried to say something, but he didn’t know how to begin.

  ‘Who are you anyway?’ Lydia demanded. ‘Does Tuck know you have his - hey, isn’t that Tuck’s jacket? That is Tuck’s jacket. You’re wearing his jacket!’

  Jack had put the jacket on before leaving the apartment. More than ever, he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Lydia!’ shouted Tuck from inside him. ‘Shut up and listen!’

  Automatically, Jack passed the message on: ‘Lydia! Shut up and listen!’

  She gave him a very curious stare. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘Tuck told me,’ Jack managed to say. ‘I’m a friend of his.’

  She continued staring, still looking doubtful.

  ‘Tell her you have to talk to her,’ Tuck said.

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ Tuck parroted aloud.

  ‘So talk,’ she said.

  ‘Somewhere quiet!’ Tuck said earnestly. ‘Suggest a restaurant or something. Tell her I’m in trouble.’

  ‘Tuck’s in trouble,’ Jack said. ‘Can we go somewhere private to talk?’

  Still she was suspicious. She considered, then said, ‘All right. If Tuck is really in trouble . . . But I warn you, if you try anything funny - I’m a black belt in karate!’

  ‘She’s lying,’ Tuck whispered.

  But Jack was too busy gazing longingly at Lydia to listen.

  Ten minutes later, Jack and Lydia were sitting opposite one ano
ther at a quiet restaurant table, each with a cup of coffee in front of them.

  ‘So what sort of trouble is Tuck in?’ Lydia wanted to know.

  Jack suddenly went blank. How could he possibly tell her the truth?

  ‘Say I’ve been kidnapped,’ Tuck told him. ‘Tell her I'm being held to ransom.’

  Jack repeated this to Lydia. She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  ‘Tuck’s being held to ransom?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  With Tuck prompting him, Jack said, ‘We need a certain microchip to get him back. It was taken from the Vectorscope lab this morning.’

  ‘So there was a break-in!’ Lydia said triumphantly. ‘I thought as much. And I had a hunch that Tuck was involved with Vectorscope. But how? And what’s your involvement?’

  She was scrutinizing him doubtfully, and Jack was pretty sure that he didn’t pass muster as a scientist-type.

  ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Well, that’s a long story.’

  ‘Good,’ said Lydia. ‘I’m a reporter. I like long stories.’

  Once again, Jack was at a loss. He took a gulp of his coffee.

  ‘Jack,’ said Tuck, ‘don’t let her take control of the conversation! She’s a woman - dominate her! Be aggressive! Be me! ’

  The idea of dominating anyone was foreign to Jack’s nature, but he knew he had to try to take control. He drew himself up, tried to look as tough and as steadfast as he could.

  ‘Look, Lydia - you’ll just have to trust me, okay? There’s no time for explanations. We only have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Now I understand you have some knowledge of corporate espionage.’

  Tuck had filled him in on something of Lydia’s background as a reporter. But Lydia was looking anxious.

  ‘Nine o’clock?’ she said. ‘What happens then?’ ‘That’s when Tuck . . . uh, the deadline, expires.’

  ‘Can’t we negotiate for more time?’

  ‘Uh ... no ... we can’t.’

  ‘Why not? Where is he, anyway? Where do they have him?’

  ‘Where? . . .’ Again Jack was becoming flustered, his attempt to take charge already crumbling away.