by Mel Gilden
Heavenly looked something like Sylvia Woods, but I convinced myself that there were differences — a whisker’s difference in the length of a nose, an eyebrow arched into a slightly different curve, lips more pouty, or less. I could probably tell the two women apart if they were standing together in a strong light. If the wind were right and all the planets were in the right places. Sure I could. Marlowe, master of identification.
Despite the heat of the day and the warmth of the room she was wearing a long-sleeved sweater that looked as if it were knitted from string. The V of the neckline dived so low I could see most of the tanned swell of her breasts. Bill walked forward as he said, ‘Hey, baby!’
I began, ‘Bill - ’ but Heavenly looked at him and smiled. ‘Hey, baby,’ she said.
Bill stopped, a little confused, but he gamely continued, ‘Let’s make it, babe’
‘Get down!’ Heavenly said eagerly. ‘Get funky!’
‘Funky?’ Bill said.
‘Sure,’ she said. She touched the point of the V on her sweater.
Bill looked at me over his shoulder, a frown on his face that would soon crack the rivets holding his mouth together. He said, ‘What do I do now?’
‘Don’t you know?’
Heavenly laughed — a pleasant minor arpeggio. ‘Of course not. He doesn’t have the equipment. For one thing, it isn’t made in his size. And like most of the units of his model, he needs a little adjustment. A good dose of reality usually does it.’
‘You should give that little hint to your sales staff,’ I said.
Bill walked back to me, his beak nearly shovelling the ground. He said, ‘How humiliating. I’ve been adjusted.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘By an expert.’
‘Who are these bozos?’ said Heavenly, idly curious.
The golden robot said, ‘The one with the nose is Zoot Marlowe, a detective. The little one with the proposition is his ‘bot, Bill.’
‘What do they want?’
‘Marlowe mentioned three gorillas.’
Heavenly stiffened. She lifted one hand and scratched the opposite arm, but carefully, as if she were petting a cat.
While she was doing that, I said, ‘Marlowe also knows how to speak English pretty well. He’s had lessons.’
Heavenly strolled back to the couch, giving us plenty of time to admire how good the tight blue jeans looked on her. She sat down, crossed her legs, and laced her hands around one knee. While the golden robot sat down next to her she said, ‘All right, Marlowe, speak.’
‘I need your help.’
‘What happened to the three gorillas?’
‘I’m saving them for the big finish.’
‘If there is no big finish, Slamma Jamma here will throw you out.’
Slamma Jamma, the big golden robot, leaned back and extended his arms along the back of the couch.
‘You know about the Surf-O-Rama?’
‘For sure,’ Heavenly said. She cuddled into Slamma Jamma’s armpit.
I wondered if it were comfortable to cuddle with something made of metal. What I said was, ‘Maybe you’ve heard that SSR has bought all the surf-bots and surf-bot parts along the coast.’
‘One hears rumours.’
‘Yeah. One does. One is also threatened by gorillas who were able, despite the disappearance, to purchase a lot of surf-bots from SSR.’
‘Tell me about the gorillas.’ Her voice was not as relaxed as her body would have me believe.
‘In a minute. First, I want to ask you for some help that would go a long way toward squaring the things SSR has done, and everybody involved with them has done. My friends can’t compete in the Surf-O-Rama because somebody, maybe somebody connected in some way with SSR, has worked over their surf-bots, not leaving very much but scrap metal. I’d like you to come with me and even the score by stopping everybody from competing.’
‘That’s clever,’ Heavenly said. ‘What for?’
‘If nobody competes, nobody wins, and nobody loses. Most particularly my friends don’t lose a certain bet - involving a special recipe for yoyogurt — they made with some not very wholesome dudes. Who, by the way, also seem to be friends of those gorillas. Interesting, no?’
‘I guess I’m supposed to ask, "Why me?"’
‘Because Sylvia Woods says you’re a computer genius, and I think that’s what it’ll take to do the job. This may surprise you, but you’re the only computer genius I know.’
Bill looked at me as if I’d yanked his head with a chain. I didn’t look at him. It got so quiet, I could just about hear the jingling birds outside. Air conditioning hummed.
Heavenly said, ‘I think it’s time for the big finish.’
I nodded and said, ‘Three gorillas are looking for you. That wouldn’t mean anything to me except for the fact that they’re not very polite about it. Except for the fact that they seem to be involved in the surf-bot chicanery against my clients that I mentioned before. Except for a small matter of attempted murder.’
‘So?’
‘The fact that they are also looking for you involves you in all this to some extent.’
‘Not much of an extent.’
‘Maybe not. But your father thinks that it’s enough that you need a bodyguard.’
‘I don’t think Slamma Jamma needs help.’
I glanced at the big golden robot. He was sitting casually next to Heavenly, one hand resting on one massive leg, his electronic eyes missing nothing. He was casual the way a spider casually waits for flies.
‘You may be right. But we still need to talk. Now. First, I need your help. Second, the police will make the same connections I have, and eventually they will find you. I may be able to straighten things out before you have to talk to them.’
Heavenly drummed her fingers on Slamma Jamma’s leg. Her nails made a noise a lot like the noise her father’s feet made on the rocks at his fake seashore. She said, ‘If anything needs straightening out, Mr Marlowe, it’s you. Obviously, I am not responsible for either the actions of SSR or for whatever some psychotic gorillas may want from me. One of the reasons my father and I take such care with security is that a lot of industrial spies are out there, and some of them are none too gentle.’
‘You can’t think of any reason these particular gorillas might want to see you dead?’
‘Nobody has taken a shot at me, Mr Marlowe.’
‘No. But they’ve taken a shot at your social secretary, Sylvia Woods.’
Heavenly leaned away from Slamma Jamma, and her eyebrows rose just enough. She said, ‘Why would anybody want to shoot Sylvia?’
‘Because,’ I said, ‘they thought she was you.’
‘Reaching, Mr Marlowe.’
‘I don’t think so. They told me they were looking for you. They shot at her. I’m not reaching very far to make a connection.’
Heavenly sighed. It was a great sigh that came from deep within her. ‘What do you want me to say, Mr Marlowe? That I know why these three gorillas are after me? That I am somehow involved in a plot to keep surf-bots from your friends? That I have an unnatural interest in yoyo-gurt?’
‘It would be refreshing, yes.’
‘Mr Marlowe, when people like you are not bothering me, my life is good. I spend it out here doing the research I want to do. I am looking for better ways to cure warts without surgery, to clear up acne, to banish horrid age spots, prevent ingrown toenails, athlete’s foot, and dandruff, to straighten hair and curl hair, to give nose jobs, to improve bustlines and bottoms and such.’
‘To boldly go where no patent medicine has gone before.’
‘You wound me with your wit,’ Heavenly said through bared teeth.
Suddenly a two-tone chime began to ring like a doorbell, but insistently and without stopping. Slamma Jamma leaped to his feet, leaving in the cushion where he’d been sitting an impression of concentric circles. He ran across the room to a chart of the human body and pulled a cord next to it. The chart rose, revealing a bank of television screens. W
e gathered around him as he fiddled with some controls. Each screen showed a view outside the house. In one of them, three men in heavy fur coats, too heavy for the weather, were lumbering away from us as fast as they could.
Chapter 24
Promises, Promises
THEY must have followed us,’ I said.
‘Who?’ Bill said.
‘Those gorillas. And from the speed they’re making getting out of here, we’d better do the same.’ I picked up Bill. I didn’t run for the door, but I didn’t dawdle either. Slamma Jamma swooped down, picked up Heavenly, and ran ahead of me.
We were out the door in seconds, across the tile, then out the front door. I leaped into the Belvedere and started the engine as Bill leaped into the back seat and Slamma Jamma pushed Heavenly before him into the front. I gunned the engine and roared back down Loma Alta Vista Del Oro. Seconds later the house exploded, blasting bits of wood and plaster and glass against the car with the impact of bullets.
At the bottom of the hill, I stopped before turning left onto PCH. A swift, hot wind blew down at us, carrying the smell of burning wood. We turned and looked out the half-charred rear window. Through the clear part we could see balls of flame boiling up from where the house had been.
‘We’d better call the fire department,’ I said.
Heavenly didn’t say anything but turned around to face front. She would never be ugly, but shock made her beauty almost average.
I waited for a hole in traffic and then turned onto PCH, heading back for the surfers’ house.
‘Is that enough like a shot?’ I said angrily. ‘Do you believe now that those gorillas are after you?’
‘I don’t understand it,’ Heavenly said.
‘Think it over. Those gorillas didn’t choose you at random from the phone book.’
I wanted to drive fast, to work off my anger at the gorillas for blowing up the house, at Heavenly for not cooperating, at the whole world for being as nasty as it was. But I was the invisible man. I blended right in with the traffic.
We’d been driving for a while when Heavenly said, ‘Where are we going?’
‘I thought we might look in on the Surf-O-Rama.’
‘I didn’t make you any promises.’
‘You could promise me now.’
Heavenly looked past Slamma Jamma out the window at the ocean. ‘Surf’s up,’ she said quietly and then did not say anything for a long time. None of us did.
I stopped once, at a burger stand that had a public phone, to call the fire department. Traffic began to back up. There was a lot of honking and fast lane-changing, but nothing would get you where you were going any faster. Some people kept trying anyway. The police had to deal with a few of them.
The tables that people had been setting up earlier had now become concessions selling junk jewellery, brass doodads, fast food, T-shirts, pennants, binoculars, paintings done on velvet. They lined the street for miles. Not even the constant breeze off the beach could blow away the smells of cooking grease and incense. Colourfully dressed people grazed among the tables, buying things they would never buy at home. What didn’t make them sick would make them wonder tomorrow why they’d bought it today.
Eventually I drew up to the tiny parking space outside the surfers’ house. The space was empty. As I’d guessed, Whipper Will must have chased away the T-shirt people with the dirty yellow tent. As I pulled in, a policeman started over to us. But when he saw that I had a key to the house, he went back to holding up a telephone pole and interrogating a thin woman who was mainly wearing some blonde hair that fell in waves to the bottom of her bottom.
Nobody was home. I herded Heavenly, Slamma Jamma, and Bill through the house to the kitchen and out the back door. People moved up and back on the black paved strip either afoot, or on bicycles or roller skates. Classical music bobbed and feinted with rock-and-roll as people carrying radios passed. The blues swung in and out. There were a lot of dogs, on leashes and off. At least one woman in a bright red next-to-nothing had a live snake draped around her neck. Beyond the strip, you could not see the beach for the people. Whipper Will and the others were out there someplace. Probably as close to the water as they could manage. They wouldn’t be able to stay away, even if they couldn’t compete.
I said, ‘Excuse me,’ and got two kids to move so that I could stand on the wall between the backyard and the public strip. This put me almost eye to eye with Slamma Jamma. Now I could see a line of surf-bots out on the water, their arms outstretched and leaving trails of coloured smoke from their fingers.
‘Look over there,’ I said. I pointed a little to one side, where a judges’ stand had been built from wood and a lot of red-white-and-blue bunting. In front of it, Gotterdammerung was checking things on some shiny new surf-bots. I thought of cockroaches nibbling at silver sardines.
‘I never promised,’ Heavenly said.
‘Sure. I know. Let those gorillas get away with everything. It’s OK.’
‘What would you want me to do?’
‘Forget it,’ I said sharply and waited.
‘No, really,’ Heavenly said.
I sighed. I made it seem as if explaining things to Heavenly would be the most difficult thing I’d ever done, at least that week. I said, ‘See those people in black down there, setting up their ‘bots?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Gotterdammerong. I think they work for the gorillas. I think that if they win, the gorillas will win.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
I still wasn’t looking at her. I said, ‘I want you to jam Gotterdammerung’s remote-control boxes.’
‘Why?’
‘I want to test a little theory.’
I glanced at Heavenly. She was looking at Gotterdam-merung, nodding. She said, ‘I don’t have any equipment.’
Bill said, ‘I’ll bet Slamma Jamma has a lot of swell circuits inside him.’
Heavenly shrugged and said it was worth a try. She asked Slamma Jamma for his tool kit. He opened a door in his hip and handed her a slim plastic packet. Then, at Heavenly’s request, he lay down on the red bricks in the backyard and spread his legs a little. Heavenly knelt between his legs and, with a fingernail, opened a long door down the inside of the big muscle above the knee. A bank of tiny lights — red, green, and blue — flashed above screws and switches mice might use to turn their lights on and off.
From the slim packet Heavenly took slim tools and began to adjust things inside Slamma Jamma’s leg. Slamma Jamma groaned once or twice, and his right arm twitched. A moment later, Heavenly sat back on her heels and said, ‘I’m about done.’
‘All right.’ Out on the water, Tankhauser and a tall blond guy wearing a blue windbreaker and yellow walking shorts stood on the contestants’ platform watching their ‘bots swim out. The ‘bot the other guy was running had been painted with black and red tiger stripes. As soon as Tankhauser’s silver ‘bot stood up and began his ride, I said, ‘Do it now.’
Heavenly threw a tiny mouse switch. Nothing happened. The silver ‘bot continued to cruise through the tube, keeping up pretty well with the other ‘bot.
‘I thought it might not work,’ Heavenly said.
‘I thought so too,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you give it a try, Bill?’
‘My meat,’ Bill said and scrambled down between Slamma Jamma’s legs as Heavenly got to her feet. Bill studied the electronics for a moment, then went to work.
Heavenly watched him until the two ‘bots slid onto the beach on their boards. The next heat would begin soon. Behind us, Bill scratched around on the bricks as he moved. Heavenly said, ‘I guess Sylvia was wrong about my being a computer genius.’
‘Maybe.’
She looked at me sharply, then decided not to ask me what the hell I meant by that. Her face softened into a gentle smile. ‘Bill is a good little ‘bot.’
‘Good enough so far,’ I said.
She agreed and a moment later, Bill said, ‘I got it.’
Heavenly
grunted. Maybe it was supposed to be a cynical laugh, but it sounded like a grunt.
Wortan lumbered up the three steps onto the contestants’ platform. He’d worked white ribbons into his hair and beard. He was as cute as a rusty screen door. He nodded to the kid who stood next to him. The kid was not much taller than I, and he wore an orange wet suit. He threw back his head and cried, ‘Ahh-roooh!’ and the crowd cheered, momentarily overwhelming the sound of the waves. Wortan put one big mitt on the kid’s shoulder but took it away immediately.
Wortan’s ‘bot was the same silver as Tankhauser’s, but white ribbons were tied around its wrists and ankles. The kid’s ‘bot was orange, like his wet suit. They swam out. A big wave rolled in, and the two ‘bots stood up.
‘Now,’ I said.
Bill said, ‘You got it.’ For a moment, the orange ‘bot did a crazy dance, then it stood at attention and went down with its board. Wortan’s ribbon-bedecked ‘bot hung ten and went into a Quasimodo pose, sailing along like a marble on glass.
I said, ‘I think that those ‘bots Gotterdammerung are running aren’t any more remote-controlled than I am. I think somebody ought to tell the judges about it. What do you think?’
‘Was that your little theory?’ Heavenly said.
‘Part of it.’
‘What’s the other part?’
I was going to tell her what the other part was, but I didn’t have a chance. Three gorillas stepped around the side of the house. Each of them was wearing a blue bathing suit, a yellow tank top, and a pair of mirror shades. What improved their appearance even less was the fact that each of them was pointing a pistol in our direction.
Chapter 25
More Or Less Human
I COULD have been a hero. I could have led Heavenly and the others away while the three gorillas shot us in our backs. I could have jumped at the three of them, knocked their heads together, and eaten their pistols like liquorice. But I wasn’t a hero. I was just some guy from T’toom doing his best to play a game that had gotten rougher than even my father or Grampa Zamp could have guessed. Be careful, my father had told me. If he could see me now.
