by Ron Goulart
CHAPTER 19
A HOT WIND WAS rushing across the early evening parking lot next to CWS’s Valley Sector studios. The mammoth CWS pennant on the silver pole above the center building snapped and rattled.
Before Jake reached the reception area doors a sagging human guard came shuffling out to meet him.
“I’m here,” began Jake, “to do the—”
“Statue!” cried the old man. “Make like a statue or I’ll use this.”
“Use what?”
“Darn, this senility’s really getting to be a bother.” The uniformed old man examined his empty hands. Head bobbing, he extracted a stungun from the holster slung beneath his overhanging stomach. “This is only a stungun, which is all the chickenpuck law allows me to use, but I got ways to shoot it so’s it’ll do permanent damage. For instance, a good zing smack in your goonies and you’ll be sterile for life. Possibly take to walking around like you got a fried egg in one of your shoes.”
“They’re expecting me on the Blab! show.” Jake eased ahead, eyes on the quivering gun.
“Name?”
“Jake Pace.”
“No, the name of the show. I’m near stone deaf in this ear so you. … Yow!” The old guard had been indicating the ear in question with the hand holding the stungun. He had just zinged himself in the ear lobe. “Have you ever been old?”
“Not so far.”
“It treats you mighty rough,” the old man confided. “Wasn’t bad enough I couldn’t hear, now my lobe and entire outer ear are all pins and needles.”
“Before you do yourself further damage, check in with somebody on Blab! I’m on a tight schedule.”
“Blab!” echoed the guard. “What a corny tag for a show. Back when I was a lad we had shows with stunning names like Remembrance of Things Past and After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.”
“They never had shows like that. Get Harlow Titts on the pix.”
“Listen, I used to watch Remembrance of Things Past every afternoon when I came home from school,” insisted the old guard, rubbing at his injured ear. “Eat my little plate of chocolate chip cookies, sip my glass of homogenized milk and watch the exciting adventures of Marcel Proust and his dog Sandy.”
“Contact Harlow Titts!”
“There’s another name I don’t think highly of. In my distant youth we’d have laughed at a monicker such—”
“Pop, what the hell are you up to? You didn’t shoot him, did you?” An anxious Harlow Titts came hurrying out into the evening.
“Shot myself if you must know. Ear’s gone clean to sleep. Think the prickly feeling may be spreading to my center of bal. …”A sharp gust of hot wind blew the old man clean over.
Stepping over the body, Titts took Jake’s hand. “I’m really glad you could make this, Jake,” he said, giving off gladness. “Mad Dog DeAndrea canceled at the last minute, so if you’d been a no show I dread what—”
“I’m here. We can start taping.”
“Yes, right. We are in a hurry aren’t we? Can you tell me, by the way, how your investigation into poor State’s death is going?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, well, come on in then.”
“I’ll stay sprawled here till my shift ends,” said the guard from a nearby bed of plaz tulips.
“Fine, Pop.”
Inside the high, wide CWS reception area Jake sniffed. “Has a brand new smell.”
“Yeah, we pump that through the aircirc system. People seem to like it, especially in CalSouth where newness is really important. Come on around here.”
He hurried Jake onto a pastel ramp which led to another level. “Who else is going to be on the show?” Jake inquired.
“Well, we’ve got Senator William F. Clamchow. He—”
“That bastard.”
“Good, good. Glower like that when you’re on camera,” said Titts, hugging himself around the middle. “We also have Lady Jane Pistol, whose work you’ve no doubt read.”
“She does that ‘Who I Screwed’ column in Mammon magazine, doesn’t she? Every week she recounts her sexual experiences over the past seven—”
“She used to,” cut in Titts, anxious. “Downplay that angle when we’re taping, Jake. Lady Jane’s just undergone a spiritual conversion, joined something called the Holy Streamlined Christian Church. Don’t know if you’re familiar with their basic creed or—”
“Know all about ’em.”
“I hear they have a really nice shrine in New Mexico or some such state.” Titts jumped forward, jerked a plaz door open. “Here we are at Studio 13, Jake. Come along and let me intro you to our host, Sleepy Joe Bryan. He has sort of a reputation for being feisty, so don’t mind if he heaps vile insults on you on the spot. Or he might take a poke at you, or even possibly attempt to boot you in your privates. There have been times, I’ll be perfectly frank, when he came at a guest with a rusty commando knife he saved from his stint in the armed services during the last Brazil War. Once he tried an antique Thugee strangling cord on—”
“Forewarned is forearmed.” Jake crossed to the small, fuzzy-haired host who was slumped in a glaz tubchair.
“… Soft As, the toilet tissue for people with sensitive backsides, brings you Blab! Yes, the award-winning discussion hour starring the controversial electrojournalist. Sleepy Joe Bryan. Tonight’s thought-provoking and rabble-rousing topic is: Are Private Investigators Really Crooks? Gathered here in our new-smelling CWS studio this evening are Senator William F. Clamchow, whose bill to catch and band all private detectives is now before Congress; Lady Jane Pistol, former sexpot who has converted to a new religion and given up rolling in the hay; and the notorious Jake Pace, who with his beautiful and controversial wife heads up the famed Odd Jobs, Inc., believed by many knowing critics to be the most successful private inquiry agency on Earth. Before we jump into tonight’s controversial topic, here’s former National Airball Fastbacker, Tomo Asanovic, to tell us about the latest in-store Soft As toilet tissue tests.”
“That’s right, Dale. I’ve seen a lot of fast plays in my day, but I’ve never seen a toilet tissue slide across a backside as fast as new Soft As. I was truly impressed one day recently when I watched customer after customer make the famous Soft As test. First they wiped their bottoms with a rival brand, then they wiped with new and improved and comfortably quilted Soft As. Well, let me tell you. …”
Jake turned from watching the immense monitor screen suspended over the dais he was sharing with the show’s other participants. He studied the warm, smooth hand resting in his lap.
“Even though,” said Lady Jane Pistol in her husky voice, “I’ve given up my weekly column on screwing, Jake, I still do an occasional feature article for a major national publication.”
“I would have thought your new creed ruled out—”
“One or two a month, what’s it hurt?” She was a tall, golden-haired woman of twenty-seven, wearing a slit-legged spunglaz slaxsuit. Increasing her pressure on his thigh, she added, “Unless your wife would object.”
“She wouldn’t, but I might.”
Lady Jane withdrew her hand. “We’re talking big circ mags, Jake. You screw me and I guarantee you 50,000,000 people are going to read about it. That kind of publici—”
“Button your yap, bimbo!” mentioned the frazzle-haired host from the lucite hammock he was sprawled in. “We’re on in nineteen seconds.”
“Did you ever screw anybody in that silly hammock, Joe? It might make an interesti—”
“Stuff it, L.J.” Bryan ran his stubby fingers through his frazzled hair, frazzling it to new heights. “I don’t even know why we booked you on this flapping show. Shitola, a book with a title like St. Bubbles: From Chorus Line to Canonization. Uck.”
“It’s really quite uplifting, Joe.”
“I’d like to uplift you on the end of the old quiffer. That’d make. … Private detectives, are they an asset to our society or a liability? A boon or a pain in the toke? These are the questions we’ll be ans
wering on our Blab! panel tonight.”
A small compact robot camera had come floating over to film the reclining Sleepy Joe Bryan.
Another lunchbox-sized camera was covering the row of three guests.
“Sitting in with the Old Sleepy One tonight,” Bryan continued, “are lovely Lady Jane Pistol, grim-visaged Jake Pace, the distaff side of Odd Jobs, Inc. And—”
“Actually, Joe,” put in Senator Clamchow, “you can’t refer to a gentleman, or even a person like Pace, as comprising the distaff side. That phrase must be used exclusively in describing the female. In earlier times the distaff was used in spinning, thought to be a—”
“How’d you like to thrust about two and a half feet of distaff up your butt, Senator? I don’t need you to—”
“Cut!” boomed a loud voice from somewhere up in the shadows near the ceiling of the big studio.
Bryan’s frizzy eyebrows met as he gazed angrily upward. “What the frap are you cutting me for, you toadstool?”
“No unseemly references to the posterior or anal orifice, remember, Joe?” reminded the unseen director. “You should know that. Soft As insists we never—”
“Aw, they can plant their chapped lips on my rosy red backside.” Bryan’s scowl intensified “Okay, let’s roll again. Pick up where Senator Asswipe interrupts me.”
“That last wasn’t taped, was it?” demanded the silver-haired Senator. “I’d hate to have my constituents hear me being described as an asswipe.”
Jake was glancing from side to side. He leaned far to the left in his plaz slingchair, touched the floor. There was a definite vibration. In addition, his stomach told him he had been climbing at a rapid rate for the past minute. “But that’s impossible,” he said.
Lady Jane said, “He’s tumbled.”
Bryan dropped out of the hammock. “Who gives a rat’s ass now?”
The director boomed, “Joe, you can’t talk about the posterior of a rodent. It’s poor fusion when—”
“Can it, jerko. Pace knows he’s in a trap.”
Senator Clamchow’s silver head bobbed up and down a few times. “Very perceptive for a—”
“We’re flying someplace?” Jake inquired.
“Rocketing actually,” replied Lady Jane.
“Rocketing?”
“This isn’t a studio, stupe,” amplified Bryan. “It’s really a highly sophisticated space shuttle.”
“Next stop,” Lady Jane said, snickering, “Space Colony Number 33.”
“This is impressive, as well as flattering,” Jake told them. “Building an exact replica of a CWS studio, ringing in all you people. Expensive.”
“We aren’t real people,” said Lady Jane. “We’re andies. Only Titts was real, and it didn’t cost much to take over the control of his pea-brain.”
Jake blinked. “You folks are all machines?”
“Very high-priced ones,” she said. “Foolproof.”
“Yeah, I’m usually not fooled,” said Jake, unhappiness showing on his weathered face. “I’m being kidnapped?”
“Taken to see some people who want you kept out of the way,” said Sleepy Joe Bryan.
“Damn,” said Jake. “Hildy’s really going to razz me about walking into this.”
CHAPTER 20
“WELL NOW, FOLKS,” CAME the cordial voice of the skytram pilot, “there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I don’t like the tone of his voice,” complained a chubby lady passenger across the aisle from Hildy.
From out of the ceiling speakers of the rapidly dropping aircraft came new voices.
“Lola, I didn’t fight bravely in the Napoleonic wars only to come home to this!”
“But, Romain, they told me you’d been felled by grapeshot and had perish—”
“Excuse that,” said the unseen pilot. “We got the sound track of today’s first-class motion picture mixed in with my talk.”
“That sounded like an interesting film,” said the chubby lady. “Next time, if I survive this, I’m going to travel first—”
“Let me explain first about why we’re not landing at the Yashim Skyport here in the capital of Zayt,” continued the voice of the pilot. “Well, the answer to that is simplicity itself. There is no more skyport. You see, Zayt is in the midst of a new revolution and, as I understand it, the forces loyal to Shiek Sahl al-Haml have blown the darn place to. … No, wait a minute. One of our flight attendants, pretty little Peggy, informs me it was the rebel forces who took care of the Yashim Skyport. The loyalists blew up the State School for the Deaf next door to the skyport. Okay, now if you’ll look out your windows as we go zooming toward Earth, you’ll no doubt be able to see the rebels in action. They’re all dressed like gas station attendants, which is how you can tell them from the loyalists. The loyalists are in those striped robes and, you know, those whatever you call ’em things they wear over their heads. Not a turban, but you know. Basically, the bone of contention in the battle is the control of Zayt’s rich oil deposits. The gas station attendants feel they. … No, Wait. One of our other flight attendants, dapper Bruce, is telling me there are religious factors involved which are equally—”
“Can the bullcrap! Are we going to crash?”
“Where the blazes are we going to land?”
“What’s going on?”
“… as to the nature of the True God. Am I getting this right, Bruce? Yes, so that means they also want to knock off the shiek because he’s been claiming to be divine but now they don’t think he is. Especially since he’s been screwing them out of about three billion dollars a year in oil profits. So … oh, here’s some good news. We’ll be landing at the Big Mac Mosque on the outskirts of Yashim, folks. You’ll be able to bunk in their skytel or arrange for transportation elsewhere. They also tell me the special of the day is the soyburger with a side order of. …”
The chubby woman leaned out toward Hildy. “I imagine this is all grist for your mill, Mrs. Courtbenson.”
Hildy replied, “Yes, I’m in on what we call a scoop for sure.”
“I subscribed to your NewsFax newspaper for awhile in my home in Orlando, Florida, but it started coming out of my printer all fuzzy. I could put up with fuzzy news of the world, but the brain teaser and the crossword were all fuzzy, too.”
“We’ve remedied that,” Hildy assured her.
“My, I do envy you, though. So young and pretty, with those raven tresses,” sighed the chubby woman. “And here you are the publisher of one of the major fax papers in America. Are you in Zayt on an assignment?”
“I’m scheduled to interview the shiek.”
“Won’t he be hiding out? With all these crazed mechanics running around. I’ve never really trusted anybody who works in a gas station. You ought to see what they did to the transmission of my—”
“I understand the shiek sought sanctuary at the American Embassy,” said Hildy. “He won’t be that difficult to find.”
“Now, folks, don’t scream and yell,” said the pilot. “Turns out we won’t be landing at Big Mac after all. Darned if the rebels haven’t blown that up, too.”
Hildy set her rented skycar on automatic and strapped on a skybelt. All the streets leading to the American Embassy were clogged with armed gas station attendants and two trucks with blasterguns mounted on them. The Embassy itself was safe behind high stone walls.
“Would you spell your name again, please?” requested the Embassy clerk Hildy was in radio contact with.
“I’m Maggie Courtbenson, publisher of NewsFax. I have an appointment to interview the shiek.”
“Just a minute, just a minute. Oh, yes, here you are. Things are sort of hectic hereabouts. Golly, this picture of you in your dossier gives me the impression you’re quite a nifty broad.”
“I am. Now tell your people to be sure not to shoot at me while I’m dropping down via skybelt. Okay?”
“Sure, I’ll take care of that myself. My name’s Edward Wintz, by the way. Originally from the Frisco Enclave. In ca
se you want to mention me in your paper.”
“We should be able to fit you into a brainteaser, Edward. See you shortly.”
Hildy popped the escape hatch, lowered herself, long legs first, out of the circling craft.
A laser canon sent a beam zipping up into the midday sky, but it came nowhere near her.
Hildy dropped from the underside of the skycar, fell a hundred feet before flicking on her skybelt. The rest of the descent was slow and gentle.
Hildy landed deftly on the flat roof of the main Embassy building.
A moment later she noticed fingers showing on the roof edge.
“Come on, Dwayne, boost me.”
“I’m trying my best, Clarence.”
“Oof … I said boost, not goose.”
Soon a husky young man in a two-piece U.S. Marine uniform came huffing onto the roof. Getting himself upright, he announced, “I’m Corporal Clarence Winderspan, ma’am.” He grinned and saluted. “Turns out we don’t have a door or anything in this darn roof. Therefore you’ll have to climb over the side of the building on a sort of rickety fire-escape ladder until you reach the third floor.”
“Is that where Shiek Sahl al-Haml is?”
“No, ma’am, that’s where Mr. Willis the Ambassador is,” answered the Marine. “He wants to welcome you first. It’s protocol.”
“Okay, let’s meet him.”
“May I give you a hand, Mrs. Courtbenson? I mean, I’ll try to handle your tantalizing body as respectfully as possible under the circumstances.”
Hildy crossed to the edge, gazed down. The other Marine was perched on the fire-escape landing a floor below.
“Corporal Dwayne Rigsby at your service, ma’am.” He saluted up at her.
“I won’t need help.” Hildy swung over the edge, planted a foot on a rung of the plaz ladder and climbed swiftly down to where the beaming corporal was waiting.
“Step right on through this here window, Mrs. Courtbenson. Do you need a helping hand?”
“No thanks.”
“I’ve never met any wealthy newspaper publishers, but I venture to say you’ve got to be one of the loveliest.”
“I am, yes.” Hildy stepped, gracefully, over the window sill.
