by Mel Gilden
I said, ‘Who’s the tin can?’
I’d stepped on the voice’s toes. It said, ‘That is hardly a tin can, Mr Marlowe. It is SSR’s best model, and it is fully functional. Among other things, it actually surfs, which many SSR models do not do.’
‘If it’s still fully functional, it’s the only surf-bot around that is.’
‘What does that mean?’ the voice said angrily. Did Mr Daise just not like me to steer the conversation, or had I ever so delicately touched a nerve?
‘Maybe nothing,’ I said. ‘What does it mean to you?’
‘Why, nothing whatsoever. What is your fee?’
Philip Marlowe had gotten twenty-five a day plus expenses. But that had evidently been a long time ago. The prices in the mall in Malibu had been an education. I said, ‘A hundred a day, plus expenses.’ Mr Daise said, ‘Fine. You can pick up a week’s retainer at the reception desk on your way out.’ He said it very quickly, and I knew I should have asked for more.
I said, ‘Tell me about Heavenly.’
‘We have never been as close as a father and his daughter ought to be. I suggest you interview the Daise social secretary, Sylvia Woods. I will tell her to expect you.’
‘For a father who’s not close you seem awfully worried about Heavenly.’
‘A father and daughter don’t have to be joined at the hip in order to worry about one another.’
‘Right you are.’ I stood up and waved my finger around, taking in the nearly empty room and most particularly the dark glass window. I said, ‘This is a hell of a setup.’
‘I earned my comforts and the right not to be judged by you, Mr Marlowe. When I started this company back in ‘65, I was the only one making robots because I was the only one who knew how.’ His chuckle was like gravel falling through a sifter. ‘I was going to call them Asimov’s Choice, but I wasn’t quick enough to pick up the rights. It was one of the few mistakes I’ve made in my life. Even now I’m a better engineer than any three chip-meisters graduating from school today. I ought to know. I hire enough of them.’
Carrying the photo inside its envelope, I walked to the door and waited. I said, ‘It’s been nice talking to you, Mr Daise, but it’s turning out to be a rather full afternoon...’ I let my thought dangle in mid-air, which is all it deserved.
‘Have you noticed that I have not yet told you where the Daise mansion is? Maybe I should have waited for another private detective to come into my building after all.’
‘You hired the right private detective, Mr Daise, I have ways to find out where you live.’ A moment later the door slid open. The two guards were waiting for me outside. As we walked to the elevator I said, ‘Good-looking gent, Mr Daise is.’
Neither of the guards said anything.
As Mr Daise had promised, there was a cheque for five hundred dollars waiting for me at the reception desk in the lobby. Sitting behind the desk was a young girl who had a lot of dark elaborate hair and was wearing a white dress decorated with blue and pink palm trees. She handed the envelope to me along with a big smile that almost succeeded in raising the temperature in the lobby. The security guard glanced at us, just to keep his hand in, and then went back to his real work — rocking on his heels and staring at the tall grass in the field next door.
I asked the receptionist where I could make a phone call, and she directed me to a telephone on an end table nearby.
I sat in a chair that was a lot less comfortable than it looked and dialed Malibu.
After six rings a male voice answered, and I asked for Whipper Will. The male voice didn’t say anything, but I heard the receiver drop on the floor and leisurely footsteps of the voice’s owner walk away. I waited. The grass in the lot next door grew higher. The smile on the receptionist was a little overripe now when she looked my way. As far as the security guard was concerned, I had been in the lobby long enough to qualify as another piece of furniture.
Brisk footsteps approached the phone and Whipper Will said, ‘Hello?’
‘I thought I was going to have to crawl through the phone and find you myself.’
‘Hello, Zoot.’
I told him about how I’d gone to see Mr Chesnik and how he had put me onto Surfing Samurai Robots. Whipper Will said a drawn out, ‘Oh,’ as if the mention of SSR made a lot of things clearer. Then he said, ‘You’ve had a busy morning. You think SSR is behind all this?’
‘Maybe. But that still doesn’t explain Gotterdammerung’s interest, if any, or even why SSR might be bothering to destroy surf-bots. They can’t need the small amount of business you might give them when all of this is over.’
‘No.’ The sound of waves breaking on the shore hissed delicately over the phone. I thought of Mr Daise behind his black window. I said, ‘What is a samurai, anyway?’
Whipper Will laughed his laugh and said, ‘A kind of Japanese soldier that was very loyal to the dude giving the orders.’
‘Handy for the dude giving the orders. Are SSR robots really that good?’
‘So I hear. Personally, I like to build my surf-bots from a kit.’
‘Sure. You’re all fingers.’
‘What?’
‘All fingers. Isn’t that the opposite of all thumbs?’
‘Evidently only in Bay City.’
‘That story’s wearing a little thin, is it?’
‘I’ll believe it till you say different.’
‘Thanks.’ I hung up thinking about the strange places I found friends. The envelope with the cheque inside felt good against my ribs. It reminded me that I’d forgotten to tell Whipper Will I could start paying my own way.
When I opened the door of the Belvedere hot air punched me like a wad of damp cotton, I climbed into the oven, rolled down the front windows on either side of the car and let what wind there was blow through while I checked the water pistol in the glove compartment. It had leaked a little, but it still put out a good shot when I tried it against the hot cement of the empty car park. The water disappeared immediately when it hit the ground. I put the pistol into an outside suit coat pocket.
Traffic had not improved. Automobiles seemed to have paired off and had big litters while I was inside SSR. I wound slowly down between the Hollywood Hills and into Hollywood itself. Somebody rode my tail until I followed the snake dance at the Highland exit. The car that had ridden my bumper so hard rolled forward one car’s length and hugged the bumper of the car that had been in front of me. Some people might call that progress.
Between two cheap hotels that had despondent black men sitting out front like gargoyles. I found a place that sold hamburgers. The smell inside the small one-story building was thick enough to carve and gave the impression of having been there a long time.
Most of the people ahead of me in line ordered a burger, a shake, and some fries. I used a little of the money Whipper Will had given me that morning to do the same. At a tiny yellow table barely large enough for me to set out my food I took a bite and discovered the flavours were powerful — solid versions of the smells — but unlike anything I’d had before, even on Earth. A lot of people were eating there, so it must have been a good place, but the food made the back of my throat tickle, and my stomach was trying to send it back.
I made the short drive over to Franklin, where the traffic at this hour moved faster than the traffic on the freeway. I stopped the car in front of the Daise mansion. Traffic slid by, cool and serene on its way to put another few bones down the city’s throat.
The Daise mansion looked no more inviting than it had that morning when Mr Chesnik had shown it to me. The pale grey car was still in the driveway. I got out of my Chevy and walked to the gate, feeling better for the exercise. The gate was made of the same wrought iron spears as the rest of the fence. A small child could have squeezed between those spears. I probably could have done it myself. Instead, I pushed a pearl button on a small box next to the gate and waited for an answer.
Chapter 11
A Nasty Idea
I WAS expec
ted. The voice that answered the squawker was professional but almost friendly. The gate swung open as if it were part of a fairy tale, and I walked up the driveway. If that guy behind the black window wasn’t Mr Daise, he was the next best thing.
It was a nice driveway, and I liked walking on it, but things kept flickering on either side of me. When I looked in the direction of the flickers, all I saw were trees moving casually in the breeze. That hadn’t been what I’d seen. Then one of the flickers got careless and I saw a uniformed man duck behind a tree. After that, I spotted three more uniformed men. But they weren’t ducking behind those trees. The trees were fake, each one a sentry box for one of those guards. They said nothing to me, and I said nothing to them. I was expected.
The big car in front of the house had a fine layer of dust on it. I looked through the window at the steering wheel and saw that it had a layer of dust on it too. While I was looking, someone coughed.
I straightened up and looked across the hood of the car to the front entrance, which was carved out of two gigantic slabs of dark wood. The twin doors had opened inward.
Standing in the space between them with one hand politely covering his mouth was a robot the colour of a new penny. He was dressed in a white shirt and soft grey trousers. Around his head was an SSR headband. His expression was unreadable.
I said, ‘I didn’t know robots coughed.’
‘Coughing can be a useful social noise, sir.’ The robot had the friendly professional voice I’d heard on the box down at the gate. I walked over to the doors, and he said, ‘Ms Woods is expecting you.’
As I passed through, I said, ‘What about those guys outside?’
Those guys were not a surprise to him. He didn’t even stutter when he said, ‘They have been fully briefed. If they had not been, your visit would have already ended. One way or another.’ The robotler may have smiled.
The penitentiary look of the place was only skin deep. I followed the robotler into a two-storey foyer with a second-floor hallway looking down at it over a banister wide enough for road racing. Tapestries of unicorns and very polite dragons hung from the side walls, and behind me was a rose window God Himself would have been proud to own. High-backed wooden chairs with red seats stood at intervals along the foyer, and between them were doors. The wood in the chairs and the doors had the look of an old musical instrument.
The robotler led me into a room off the foyer that must have been a library, or one of the libraries. A through G, maybe. The volumes were as old as they looked — I could smell the paper. I wondered if Mr Daise had bought them by the yard, or if anybody had ever read them. Bisecting the centre of the room was a long leather couch. A pattern of concentric circles was already disappearing from one of the cushions.
The robot said, ‘Ms Woods will be with you shortly.’ He walked out without making a sound and closed the door behind with a click. A grandfather clock stood in one corner of the room, slicing off the seconds while dust drifted through a shaft of yellow sunlight that fell in through a high window.
A woman came into the room. She wore a grey shirt open at the throat and jeans with high-heeled pumps peeking from under the narrow cuffs. Her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. That, and the big glasses with the dark frames, made her look like a high-school kid on her first job. I knew her from someplace. And it wasn’t just because all Earthpeople look alike to me. She held out her hand and told me that she was Sylvia Woods, the Daises’ social secretary. ‘I didn’t know when to expect you. But I thought it would take you longer to get this address.’
‘I told Mr Daise I had my ways.’
‘The address and phone number are unlisted.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I do it with mirrors.’
‘All right. I suppose you have some right to your professional secrets.’ She settled behind a desk big enough for basketball, wrinkled her nose, and looked at me as if she might know me too. She said, ‘Mr Daise told me that I would not mistake you for anyone else, and he was right.’
I told her what my wayward mum had done in the sixties and she made sympathetic noises.
‘Have we met before?’ I said.
She laughed. It was a nice laugh, a cadenza by Mozart. She said, ‘Mr Daise said he showed you a picture of Heavenly. Some people say we could be sisters, but I never saw the resemblance. Heavenly’s so pretty.’
‘Fishing?’ I said.
‘Compliments are always welcome.’ She smiled. It is enough to make me forget the grease churning in my stomach.
‘You have them,’ I said. ‘And it’s a pleasant surprise. Somehow I expected the Daise social secretary to be a robot.’
‘I’ll tell you about that if you can keep a secret.’
‘I’m good at keeping secrets. But sometimes, all on their own, they leap out of their hidey-holes waving flags in the air.’
‘Not this one. And to answer your next question, no, it has nothing to do with Heavenly’s disappearance.’
‘Oh? Are there suddenly two detectives in here?’
She smiled. ‘All right. It’s just this: Privately, Mr Daise believes that humans have a touch that robots lack.’
‘A human touch.’
‘Yes. Some very sophisticated robots have intuition circuits that give them something that looks like social grace. But it’s the social grace of a monkey waving bye-bye or a dog shaking hands.’
‘And yet Mr Daise has a robotler.’
‘Sure. Robots are more reliable than humans. And nobody expects or even wants servants to have feelings.’
‘Besides,’ I said, ‘samurai robots don’t drink the sherry while the master is away or hock the family silver.’
While she was nodding, I said, ‘Tell me about Heavenly.’
She leaned back in the huge leather chair and shook her head as she began to push a pencil around on the green blotter. ‘Poor Heavenly. She always wanted to be normal. Her friends had terrific tans and hung out at the arcade and ate sushi and drove their BMWs and drank the right wine while they sat in their hot tubs. Most of them never had a thought in their pastel lives. But Heavenly was too smart to be normal. Just when she’d settled down on the beach or in the tub, she’d get an idea about a new way to program a computer or a new theory of artificial intelligence or a new way to engineer genes.’
‘Jeans? Trousers?’
Sylvia had been watching the pencil as she talked. Now she stopped moving it and looked at me with surprise. ‘Are you serious?’ she said.
‘I can be, if you want.’
My answer seemed to confuse her. She picked up the pencil, shook it at me, and said, ‘You’re a funny guy, Marlowe.’
‘Laugh a minute. So, she had these ideas.’
Sylvia narrowed her eyes at me. ‘You never heard of genes? As in chromosomes?’
‘It’s not a hot topic where I come from.’
‘But still - ’ She stopped herself and asked the sixty-four-dollar question. ‘Where exactly do you come from?’
‘I could tell you Bay City, like I tell everybody else.’
‘You could.’
‘Yeah. And you’d buy it because you’re not a robot. You have social grace and the human touch.’
‘I’d tell you I bought it, anyway.’
That went by like fog over water. I took a deep breath and said, ‘So, she had these ideas.’
Sylvia shrugged and said, ‘Yes. And she had to go home and work them out.’
‘She had to?’
‘They wouldn’t leave her alone. She had to scratch the itch.’
‘You seem to have spent a lot of time inside Heavenly’s head.’
‘We were friends.’
Quickly, I said, ‘Where do you think she is?’
Sylvia thought about that. She considered it. She turned it over in her mind like a fine piece of sculpture. She said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Thoughts? Guesses? Conjectures?’
‘I haven’t seen her in a few days. Money like hers can
buy a lot of travel.’
‘Her father wouldn’t even guess that much.’
‘He’s a little insecure. At the best of times they were not close. He wanted her to be a mechanical engineer. Her main interest is in genetic manipulation. Genes,’ she said carefully, ‘as in chromosomes. Not as in trousers.’
Leaping at that was pointless, so I said, ‘Maybe she’s off scratching her itch.’
‘Maybe. If she is, you’ll never find her.’
‘I found the house.’
‘Heavenly is not a house.’
‘No. But she has friends. Habits.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes got dreamy. Right then, she was off with Heavenly. Suddenly, she snapped out of it and looked at me as if I’d just arrived. ‘Would you like to tour the grounds? I’ll show you Heavenly’s zoo,’ she said.
‘Show me everything,’ I said.
We stepped out a back door and down two cement steps and were instantly joined by a small pot-metal robot dressed in the uniform of SSR security. As we walked along a path of yellow earth, he toddled a little behind us.
I said, ‘I think I almost met some of his brothers out in front.’
‘I’m not surprised. There are guards everywhere.’
I glanced over my shoulder and said, ‘He doesn’t look very bright.’
‘He doesn’t have to be. If he knows you, he guards you. If he doesn’t know you, he shoots.’
‘To kill or to injure?’
‘Generally, to injure. But mistakes happen.’
‘I’m glad I’m not your postman.’
The backyard seemed to cover several counties. It contained a number of long brick buildings separated from each other by formal gardens. I could smell the flowers and hear water gently tinkling in fountains. It was a relaxing place. I wanted to relax. I couldn’t relax. In the tower at the corner of the main, house, I saw movement. I said, ‘What is Mr Daise afraid of?’
‘He has a list of things. But mostly he’s afraid of industrial spies. People who want to know what he knows and won’t stop at anything to find out.’
