by Mel Gilden
‘You guys don’t know anything about surf-bots.’
‘That’s our problem,’ Tankhauser said. He smiled. His face did not crack, but it was a near thing.
Whipper Will went into a huddle with the other surfers. I was not invited. That meant I was left with nothing to look at but Gotterdammerung, and they had nothing to look at but me.
‘Hey,’ said Thor-head, ‘where’d you get that beak, Marlowe?’
‘Shaddup,’ Tankhauser said. He cleaned his nails with the big knife he took from his belt. I don’t think that clean was a concept that came easy to him, but he must have enjoyed imagining he might cut himself. The other members of Gotterdammerung watched the ocean. I shifted from one foot to the other.
‘Try not to do anything stupid,’ Tankhauser said without looking up.
A moment later, the surfers broke from their huddle, and Whipper Will said, ‘OK, Tank. Chew-on-it? Chew-got-it.’
‘OK. We ain’t talking about anybody else. Just surfer total points against Gotterdammerung total points.’
‘Right,’ Whipper Will said.
With the sound of a giant clearing his throat. Tankhauser started his engine. The others followed suit. Not far away, a crowd of gulls that had been waiting on the sand leaped into the air and circled, cawing how displeased they were at the noise.
Without another word, Gotterdammerung turned and roared back across the sand. A few minutes later they were gone. Except for the tyre tracks and the metallic taste at the back of my mouth, they might never have been there.
‘Pretty aggro,’ Thumper said.
Whipper Will said, ‘What do you think, Zoot?’
I said, ‘Me? If I think about those guys, I get a headache. Any of them know how to use a surf-bot?’
Captain Hook said, ‘Those guys know three things: motorcycles, fighting, and yoyogurt.’
‘Four things,’ Whipper Will said. He and his friends chuckled wryly.
‘I assume the fourth thing is not surf-botting,’ I said. ‘If that’s true, then I think our wallets have just been lifted, and we don’t know it yet.’
While the rest of them surfed — what passed for surfing in a world too full of technology — I asked Whipper Will the questions that I had written down the night before. I could read pretty well, and though the grammar had more twists than a corkscrew, I could manage that too. But I needed to have an entire world of words explained. Whipper Will was pretty good at it. Using a dictionary and a lot of talk, we did all right.
At one point I said, ‘What’s your story. Will?’
‘Story?’
‘Sure. There must be one. You’re not like the others.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Those others could sit on the beach all day and let their brains fry. They don’t have any more idea how to make yoyogurt than Gotterdammerung, and it doesn’t bother them. They’re nice folks, understand, just not interested in the finer things. You, on the other hand, seem to have a knack for teaching and the academic. Otherwise I’d be sitting here alone.’
Whipper Will looked at the table and idly flicked the pages of Farewell, My Lovely with a thumb. He said, ‘I used to teach professionally.’ He didn’t say any more for a while.
‘Is that it?’ I said.
‘Might as well be.’
‘Fair enough.’
One way and another, it was an illuminating afternoon. After dinner we gathered in the living room for what they called some classic flicks.
The living room was the room I’d awakened in that first morning. The stuff in it wasn’t just stuff now. It all had names. The rattling white sheets were newspapers. The books of slick coloured pictures were magazines. Seashells hung from fishnet draped artistically across one wall. In a corner, incense smoked next to a churning Lava Lite. Old beer cans and yoyogurt dishes peppered a jumble of big dirty pillows.
Yammering and laughing, the surfers scattered around the room. The system seemed to be for the girls to sit cross-legged on the floor with the guys stretched out before them, their heads in the girls’ laps. The girls played with the boys’ hair. The boys didn’t seem to mind. These weren’t the mating rituals I was used to on T’toom, but they weren’t so different, either. The point of young love is always the same. Mustard began to build funny little cigarettes from thin papers and dry leaves. People took them eagerly, lit them up, and inhaled mightily.
Bingo passed one of the cigarettes to me. I took it and inhaled as I had seen the others do. The food hadn’t killed me. A little smoke should be safe enough. The sweet-tasting smoke went through my brain as if it were a sieve. Every muscle in my body relaxed. Far away, I think cow bells tinkled. I tried to inhale again, but Bingo took the cigarette away from me. She said, ‘Go easy. You don’t want to get lost inside your own head.’
‘No. There are places there I’d rather not visit.’
Bingo handed the cigarette to Whipper Will, who took a puff and crawled on his hands and knees to the big eye in a box, the television. Too bad we hadn’t received television broadcasts on T’toom. But then all those artists with their artists’ conceptions of humans would have been out of work.
Whipper Will sorted through some rectangular boxes, slid a black plastic box from its cardboard sleeve, and shoved it into a slot in the front of the television. He turned around and sat down hard on the floor, his arms resting on his knees. He said, ‘Guys and gals, dudes and chicks, geeks and freaks, you’ll be really stoked about the flick we have tonight.’
Captain Hook and Thumper cried, ‘Ahh-roooh!’ while everybody but Mustard applauded. Mustard was leaning back in Flopsie’s lap — or was it Mopsie’s? — and staring at the ceiling through a cloud of smoke he’d just blown from his mouth.
When the outburst wound down into quiet laughter, Whipper Will said, ‘Tonight, Gino and Darlene in Beach Bunny Bash.’
‘What remainder bin did you find that in?’ Captain Hook called out. His question got a laugh. Which was probably the idea.
‘Get stuffed,’ Whipper Will said in a friendly tone. ‘It won’t hurt you hodads to watch something besides Beach Blanket Bingo for a change.’
‘We ain’t got Annette’s tits memorized yet,’ Thumper said and laughed loudly. Captain Hook punched him in the shoulder.
‘If you dudes are done with the floor show,’ Whipper Will said and pushed a button on the television. The eye came alive with coloured confetti. Music began, heavy on some string instrument and a drum. The words ‘Beach Bunny Bash’ splashed across the screen.
Whether it was a good movie, I didn’t know, never having seen a movie before. But it was interesting to somebody who knew as little as I did about Earthpeople and their culture. Or cultures. I gathered from the plot that not everybody agreed on the best way to get along.
As we watched, Whipper Will or Bingo would lean over and whisper an explanation to me. The rest of the surfers were too busy smoking and joking to be much help, or even to watch the movie very closely
‘Why do you show these things, if nobody pays attention?’ I said.
Whipper Will said, ‘The people who made these movies used a standard formula on purpose. They assumed that there would be more action in the audience than on the screen.’
‘Action?’
‘Don’t you people have sex where you come from?’ Bingo said. The thought of a world without sex evidently offended her.
‘Sure. But we don’t have the movies to go along with it.’
‘Right,’ Whipper Will went on. ‘So the plot kind of cruises along. Anybody who’s seen one or two beach movies could come in halfway through and have a good chance of knowing what was going on.’
‘Sounds about as exciting as watching the clothes go around in a washing machine.’
‘Tradition.’
I could have said something nifty and crude to that, but there was no point insulting my host for no good reason. I watched the movie instead. It was about Gino and Darlene.
He was a poor but honest surfer-boy who
hung out on the beach and took odd jobs to pay the bills. She was a rich girl with a taste for excitement. They were just a couple of kids who were ripe for, well, being ripe. At first, Gino thought Darlene was a snob, and Darlene thought Gino was a slob. Then Darlene went out surfing by herself after only one lesson. Gino saved her life. They fell in love while she was getting dry next to a fire Gino had built on the beach.
Well, it went on. When nothing much was happening music swelled — that’s the word — out of nowhere. It was usually a song about true love or the perfect wave, or both at once. Motorcycle maniacs much like Gotterdammerung confused the situation. Eventually the surfers succeeded in getting the motorcycle maniacs kicked off the beach permanently. Gino and Darlene decided to finish high school before they got married. The end.
‘Do humans watch this kind of stuff all the time?’
‘Well,’ said Whipper Will, ‘sometimes there’s Shakespeare.’
‘Oh yeah? Who wrote it?’
Whipper Will just nodded. He said, ‘When you finish the Chandler, I’ll give you the complete plays. It’ll cure you of your ignorance or kill you.’
By this time most of the couples in the room were either asleep or so involved with themselves that they might as well have been alone. Whipper Will and Bingo and I sat up and talked for a while. Then they went off to Whipper Will’s room and I went to the kitchen to read some more Chandler. The kitchen was too bright after the companionable dimness of the living room. I got engrossed in The Big Sleep. It wasn’t Shakespeare, but according to Whipper Will nothing but Shakespeare ever is.
I awoke at the kitchen table the next morning. This was getting to be a habit I’d like to break. I stood, stretching the kinks out of my muscles while I looked out the window. Nobody was out there surfing, not even machinery.
Nobody was in the living room. I walked along the hallway to the back of the house, listening to shouts and angry conversation get louder. I could not yet understand what was being said, but the tone was unmistakable.
I went out the back door and walked along the path through the vegetable garden to a smaller white building not connected to the house. Maybe this was a garage. The loud talk was coming from there. Nobody invited me. The door was open, so I just walked in.
Inside the garage, Captain Hook was marching up and down before a circle of his friends, waving his hands in the air. His friends were in shock. Everything about them slumped. They had their hands stuffed deep in their pockets and their empty eyes were deep in their heads. Captain Hook was talking, but what he said wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t even interesting to them. ‘I don’t know, dude,’ Captain Hook said. ‘We can’t just stand around hanging loose.’
‘All right, hot dog,’ Whipper Will said. You be the kahuna. I’m tired.’ He rubbed his face with both hands as if trying to rearrange his features.
‘Is this a private party?’ I said.
‘Come on in, dude,’ Whipper Will said.
Captain Hook spun on me and said, ‘Talk about hot dogs. A hodad hot dog.’ He growled as Whipper Will showed me a line of surf-bots laying on the cement as if they were asleep. Every one was badly dented or had a limb torn on, showing untidy clumps of wires.
‘You ought to take better care of your equipment,’ I said. Captain Hook laughed, sounding as if he were choking. Whipper Will said, ‘Looks as if somebody got stoked on sledgehammers, doesn’t it?’
I smiled and said, ‘Looks like a mystery to me.’
Chapter 4
Good Enough For Any World
So, I hadn’t come to Earth for nothing. Here I was at the scene of an actual crime. I’d solve it because it was the right thing to do, because somebody had to do justice. That’s why I was on Earth. Not to help the Earth-people, but to do justice. Me and Marlowe. Marlowe and me.
Captain Hook said something under his breath.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I said, "Gotterdammerung."‘
‘Evidence?’ I said.
‘Who else would do this?’ Captain Hook said.
‘I like my evidence a little warmer than that.’
Captain Hook was on me in two strides, and intending to do to me what somebody had done to the surf-bots. I socked him hard in the chest. A small oof of air escaped from his mouth, and he fell backward onto the floor, having no more idea what hit him than a puppy. The noise he made was strangely satisfying, reminding me of the fights I’d heard on the radio. Obviously, I’d hit him right. I waited for him to come at me again, but his anger had burned out. He rubbed his chest and smiled up at me in a sleepy way.
‘Pretty aggro, dude. I’ll bet Tankhauser and you would rip pretty good.’
‘I’d rather live,’ I said. I looked at Whipper Will and said, ‘What about Gotterdammerung?’
‘They’re a boss bet, all right, but nobody knows their hang.’
‘Hang?’ I said.
‘Hangout. Home is where they park their motorcycles.’
‘Somebody must know,’ Bingo said.
‘What do we do when we find them? Spank them?’
‘OK,’ said Captain Hook. ‘You be the kahuna. You tell us what to do.’
‘Let me think,’ I said and walked out of the garage. I mooned around the garden for a while. It was cool, smelled good, and reminded me of the forests of home. I searched the roses and carrots and tomatoes for ideas. Flopsie and Mopsie pretended to be weeding, but they spent more rime watching me than concentrating on their work.
After a while, Whipper Will came out of the house looking thoughtful. He joined me next to some pink explosions of flowers and said, ‘We’ve been calling around to the usual places where we buy parts for our surf-bots.’
‘Yes?’
He was having difficulty choosing the right words, as if talk was not cheap. ‘Nobody has anything.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Just what I said. There are no surf-bot parts of any description to be had, not even for ready money. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Not so much as a coil of wire.’
‘Anybody say why not?’
‘It’s all been sold.’
‘To whom?’
‘Nobody would say. Maybe they didn’t know.’
‘How could that be?’
‘This is a big deal. They may have a name on an invoice or a bill of sale, but my guess is that that name would be a dead end. The rich dudes really behind this will know how to keep their business to themselves.’
‘Does Gotterdammerung have that kind of money?’
‘No way, Ho-zay. Sometimes they have trouble coming up with enough to pay for the yoyogurt they want. Of course, they’d be easy to hire.’
‘That leaves us with the question of who has hired them. So much for Captain Hook’s terrific theory. Let’s try something else.’
We went into the house together. From the looks of the occupants, somebody had just died.
Thumper and Mustard were on the couch. Hanger was sitting on the floor between Mustard’s knees. They were looking in the direction of the television, but their faces were as empty as the space between stars. The people on television, who at the moment were jumping up and down in front of a new automobile, could have saved themselves the trouble.
In the kitchen. Captain Hook sat at the table, his leg bouncing by itself. He was concentrating on a figure-eight he made over and over again in the condensation on the side of a beer can. He took a long drink, and put the can down as if he had not done anything.
He looked up when we came into the kitchen, and kind of lolled back in his straight-backed wooden chair. Lolling was not easy to do in that chair. He’d had practice. He said, ‘Hot on the case, are we, shamus?’
‘Hot enough to know that Gotterdammerung either had nothing to do with this or was hired by a big boy we’ll have a lot of trouble finding.’
Captain Hook shook his head and twisted a beer out of its plastic carrier. ‘Have a brewski. Have enough of them, it won’t matter anymore.’
‘I lik
e your style, Captain Hook. You always have a solution.’
He set the can on the table carefully, as if the can and the table were made of glass. Tears glistened in his eyes, and I realized that he and the others were just kids. They were really ripped about losing their surf-bots — not just because the ‘bots were expensive doodads, but because the Surf-O-Rama was coming up. Without surf-bots, the kids couldn’t defend their honour.
Whipper Will wasn’t a kid. He was old enough to be the father of any of the others, and I liked him, but that wasn’t enough to know. Not by half. He squeezed Captain Hook’s shoulder and said, ‘Get mellow, dude. Zoot’s on the case.’
Captain Hook nodded, but without enthusiasm.
Will showed me how to use the telephone and the telephone book. I picked a new robot dealer at random and punched in the number.
‘Endless Summer.’
‘Hey, bro’,’ I said. ‘I’d like to buy a surf-bot.’
‘Sorry. We don’t have any.’
‘This is a surf-bot store, isn’t it?’
‘For sure. We just don’t have any right now.’
‘When do you expect more?’ I tried to keep my voice pleasant, but a certain sarcastic note must have crept in.
The Endless Summer clerk said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and I heard muffled voices. A moment later, a gruff voice came on the line and said, ‘I don’t know when we’ll get more surf-bots. Try The Happy Hot Dog over on Camino del Oro.’
‘They told me to try you,’ I ad-libbed.
The gruff voice was silent for a moment, as if I’d surprised him. He said, ‘Sorry,’ and hung up.
I set the phone into its cradle and stood there with my hand on it. I said nothing, having nothing to say.
‘Well?’ Captain Hook said. There was light behind his eyes again.
I said, ‘Somebody’s buying up all the new robots in town too.’
‘Which means?’ There was a nasty, impatient tone in his voice.
‘Lighten up. Captain,’ Whipper Will said.
I said, ‘It means nuts. I might as well have a brewski. The smart stuff isn’t getting me anywhere.’ I didn’t move.
Whipper Will said, ‘Why get ripped about any of this? It isn’t your problem.’
