Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  "Chill out, dude," he said.

  "If I don't bring an army, is it OK if I'm careful?" I said.

  Whipper shrugged and left the room.

  Whipper spent the afternoon teaching Zamp to read. When I came into the kitchen to kibitz, Whipper said, "I guess we both got too cranked."

  "Sure. Being cranked is the curse of the thinking class."

  "Yeah," he answered as if I'd said something smart. "Being careful can't hurt."

  We were fine after that. I still wished I had an army, and he still thought I was overreacting, but each let the other have his silly notions.

  The Sun went down, turning the clouds to colors that lipstick manufacturers only dream about. When the Sun was just a shimmering fluorescent dome at the edge of the world, Bill and I walked through the yard where Whipper grew natural ingredients to put into his yoyogurt and, occasionally, flowers. On the other side was the garage.

  Inside, the dim garage smelled of dust and tiny wild creatures. By the light of the single bare bulb my 1960 Chevrolet Belvedere glowed like an egg under murky water. Whipper had evidently taken care of it while I'd been gone. It was clean and full of gas. I opened the garage door and let in the yellow evening; the stores along PCH were lit like a stage set. Cars blew by on the cool ocean wind, casual as kids on skateboards.

  I let Bill into the Belvedere and then myself. The doors made a solid sound when they closed and I hoped it was a good omen. The steering wheel felt solid too. I gave Irv Doewanit's address to Bill and he said, "I got it. Boss." I backed carefully onto PCH and roared along the coast toward Los Angeles and the Santa Monica Freeway. It was as if I'd never left town.

  The ocean looked like beaten bronze in a forge. As the Sun went down, the fire died until the ocean was gray, and then it was just a big wild presence to my right, smelling of salt and rotting kelp and manly romance.

  I turned inland on the Santa Monica Freeway and boomed through the westside among ordinary cars and Melt-O-Mobiles. The occasional android driver weaved in and out of traffic, exercising his superpower. Either that, or more or less normal Earth people still drove like idiots. At Bill's direction, I went north on La Brea past gas stations and small businesses that may have been fronts for things more profitable. This was not quite the bad part of town but it had potential. At Olympic I crossed over to Highland and continued up, wondering when the city would decide that the beautiful palm trees between the north and southbound lanes were taking up too much space to be worthwhile. Suddenly Hollywood slapped me in the face.

  Despite the mayor's attempts to clean it up so it would look like the old movies, Hollywood was still bright and garish enough to be a Christmas tree ornament designed by a seven-year-old. Homeless people would still shuffle over the stars on the Walk of Fame, indistinguishable from the stuff they pushed in shopping carts. If the real planet Earth was in any way similar to the pest hole I'd described on T'toom, it was because of this sorry kind of thing.

  I drove along Sunset ignoring the neon so I could watch the traffic. Neon always excited Bill, and he could hardly stay still in his seat. Maybe it was the electricity. We passed the Crossroads of the World, a quaint thirties idea of international architecture, and came to Ivar.

  "One block up," Bill said. Turning left was not a treat, but I managed it after waiting three lights. The business day was over and it was too early for the movie crowd, so I actually found a place to park on the street. I didn't even have to put money into the meter.

  "Where?" I said.

  Bill pointed to a building like a lot of others on the street. The bottom floor was a long arcade of bright fluorescent light that made food look poisonous and made the postcards of local attractions look repulsive. Bill couldn't get enough of it. Above the souvenir shops was the somber gray front of a cheap office building. I nodded. This was just the kind of neighborhood where I would expect to find a shamus like Irv Doewanit.

  I crossed the street and passed a number of dark foreign-looking men, each of whom stood in the doorway of a store, each store selling exactly the same merchandise. For only slightly less than they were paying for a night's lodging, out-of-towners could buy anything they wanted as long as it said hello from hollywood on it or portrayed their favorite star—something to show the folks back home they'd actually been here. Back home, in the telling, Hollywood would acquire a polish it hadn't had for years. "Come on, Bill," I said, and yanked him away from a spinner of garish postcards.

  Bill and I passed a man who had a suspicious face. He tried a lightning smile as we passed, but when we turned into the narrow stairway between his store and the next one the smile flared out like the flame of a match.

  Light and sound faded as we climbed. At the top was a long hallway as narrow as the stairs. It was lit by good intentions as much as by the small electric sconces in the walls that were the height of fashion even before Philip Marlowe came to town. They had been cleaner then.

  Quiet was a thick dusty curtain.

  I stood at the top of the staircase peering along the shabby hallway, knowing it probably looked worse in the daytime when you could see the cracks in the walls, the peeling paint that had once been a color, the dust and cobwebs in the corners. Maybe there was graffiti too, just for spice. The smell was of old age, death, and constant human habitation. I looked back down the stairs. The suspicious man looked up at me, saw I was looking down, and stepped out of sight,

  "Is this the right place?" I said.

  Bill read me back the right address. I stepped quietly along the hall, trying not to disturb the worn carpet, looking for Irv Doewanit's name on a pebbled door. Bill bobbed beside me. I said, "Let's have some light."

  "Right, Boss." Light snapped out of Bill's eyes in twin yellow cones. It did nothing to improve the decor, but finding Doewanit's office became easier. I had passed it and now I went back, walking softly by the chiropractors, employment agencies, and coin dealers, so as not to awaken them.

  Yellow light was behind the glass. I knocked. Footsteps danced across the floor, and the door opened wide enough to admit several flies. It then opened wider. Doewanit smiled and said, "Marlowe, Marlowe." He let me and Bill into his office.

  Chapter 5

  The Perfect Place

  IRV Doewanit's office was a small sickly box coated with flaking green paint. Mud had more style. A filing cabinet, not too badly battered, stood in the corner under a potted cactus. Over the cactus hung a calendar showing a photograph of a very slick automobile with a lot of fins and chrome. Another door led somewhere, maybe to a closet. The rush of traffic came in through a window open just wide enough to let in some air. Even after my two previous trips to Earth I hadn't let myself hope that there was a place this perfect. If Philip Marlowe existed in any flesh at all I would come no closer than Irv Doewanit. "This is the place, Bill," I said, just enjoying being in this terrible room.

  "The street, the building, the address," Bill said proudly. With a grunt, Doewanit sat down at a desk as old as God's desk. He was not so perfect, at least as far as private eyes went. He still wore a polka-dot bow tie and a dark blue suit. He looked happy and healthy. Sitting there, he looked like a flower in a gravel pit.

  Doewanit motioned to the client's chair, which waited patiently, like an old horse. I sat down and rested my elbows on the battered arms. Bill stood beside me. He looked at me, shining light into my eyes. I told him we'd had enough and his eyelights went away.

  Doewanit pulled a brown bottle from a drawer and said, "Drink?"

  "Sure," I said. "In a dirty glass. With a hair in it."

  Doewanit laughed and said, "You know, some guys might think patter like that was a little overripe."

  He was right, of course. I was just nervous to be talking to a real human detective. I fought down my jitters as he put two clean glasses on the blotter and filled each of them halfway. While he did this he said, "Marlowe, Marlowe, you're no more from Bay City than I am."

  "Where am I from?"

  He appraised me
the way he would a hot watch. "Please don't play those games with me. If I knew where you were from I wouldn't ask, would I?"

  I sipped my drink. It was stronger than my normal brewski and burned on the way down. I took another sip and my brain began to float free and easy. I said, "We lived too close to the nuclear power plant. You should see my brother. He has ears like an elephant." Living dangerously, I said, "You'd probably like my sister."

  He laughed again and shook his head, not believing a word of it.

  I said, "I seem to be doing all the talking."

  Doewanit apparently thought so too. He pointed at me and said, "I'm a detective. For fifty bucks a day I'll sit outside anybody's house in my car. For a hundred bucks a day I'll even watch who goes in and out." Bill laughed at that, looked at me, and stopped. "Sure," I said. "The rates are printed on the back of the license. Somehow you don't seem the type." "Please," he said, and tossed back most of his drink. He was good. Smoke did not come out of his ears. "Looks aren't everything. And, unlike Philip Marlowe, I sometimes even take divorce business. I have to. Job one is survival." I glanced around the office and said, "Job two can't be interior decoration." "No," he said, not pleased to be agreeing with me. "I've come a long way since I was a staff writer for Charlie Sundown."

  "On TV?" I said. Charlie Sundown was a detective who had more charm than brains. The bad guys beat him up three or four times in the course of an episode, but they never broke anything important. He was a handsome hunk who always got the girl and always cracked the case. He never ran out of gas or bullets. His show was a favorite of the surfers.

  Bill started to sing the theme song in clear electronic tones. I would have stopped him, but Doewanit seemed to enjoy it. One finger conducted. When Bill started again Doewanit asked him to stop. Bill stopped in midnote and Doewanit said, "I got tired of just talking the talk and decided to try walking the walk. I guess I believed my own lies about detectives."

  I nodded, knowing what lies he meant. I watched Charlie Sundown too, in spite of myself.

  He told me Charlie Sundown stories that made me wonder who had a hard enough head to take that much abuse. And that was just the writers. When the first brown bottle was empty Doewanit pulled a full one from his drawer.

  It got a little drunk out. The brewski tasted good; it warmed on its way down instead of burning and made a comfy sun in my tummy. The cheap room retreated and Doewanit's face seemed to grow and glow a little, as if a light bulb were behind it. Traffic noise whispered secrets to the street. Only the smell of dust and of human decay seemed to get stronger. I had trouble sitting up straight in my chair. Bill propped me up on one side. Androids and Whipper's problem with his dad and sudden eviction and Knighten Daise continued to squirrel around in the back of my mind.

  I carefully set my glass on the desk and said, not very neatly, "You were tailing Mr. Will." A complete sentence. Pretty good.

  "What of it? I tail a lot of people. Sometimes once." He giggled at that like a dripping faucet. "For who? For why? For how? For huh?" The part of my mind not up to its chin in brewski knew I was not expressing myself in the clearest possible terms. "For huh?" I said again, just to confirm how little sense I was making.

  He leaned toward me across the desk, carefully set his elbows in place, and rested his head in his hands. He said, "Those Wills are crazy. All of them. Not just Iron and Whipper, but Trespassers, Last, and Testa. All of them." For emphasis he flung one hand aside and nearly knocked over the bottle. "All of them," he grumbled to himself, and I thought he'd fallen asleep.

  I knew Doewanit was right, of course, even from dealing with Whipper Will. The fact that a guy like Whipper, with an education and a brain to use it, lived at the beach with a troupe of gazabos made him a little eccentric in his taste, if not exactly crazed. Mr. Will didn't seem nuts so much as driven. Which made him nuts, of course.

  Which didn't prove anything. Earth people in general were nuts. I'd come back to Earth for a third time. Out loud, I said, "I guess that makes me nuts too." Doewanit spoke to his desk. He sounded as if he were crying when he said, "Not us, Marlowe. We're just two swell guys, all ready for the prom." "Sure. We'll need a prom. Neither of us in any condition to drive."

  Bill chuckled, but Doewanit laughed at that for a few hours. His mind couldn't get traction on a thought. By the time he stopped laughing we'd both forgotten why he'd started, so he sang me a song. Then I sang him one and then we sang together. We sang a lot. Then we told stories and threatened each other and made up and pledged eternal brotherhood. I may have told him where I was really from. I don't suppose it mattered anyway; he wouldn't have noticed if I'd tattooed it on his chest.

  Far away, a ghost was shrieking at me and shattering my brain with the big hammer of its voice. The tornado that twisted from my stomach up into my head was stirring the shattered bits. My nose throbbed, throwing waves of sickness into the rest of my body. And that ghost was still shrieking. The bits made patterns of androids and melting cars and credulity gas. They wanted to make sense but I couldn't help them. I was busy listening to that shrieking.

  Little by little I was glad to notice that the shrieking was not inside my head but outside. I opened my eyes and saw something very close that was shiny and brown. The shrieking was a siren. Something went by on Sunset and incidentally shattered my brains. Somebody's tax dollars at work.

  Carefully, I sat up. The shiny brown thing was the edge of Irv Doewanit's desk. Doewanit himself sat across from me with his head down. I'd have been a little disappointed if he did not feel as terrible as I did. My nose looked normal but from the inside it felt as if somebody were trying to slug his way out with his fists. Good rhythmic slugging too.

  Sunlight came through the blinds and made stripes against the walls and floor. Traffic passed outside. In the next office a typewriter and a radio were going. The world was up and busy. I shuddered.

  "OK, Boss?" Bill said.

  "I hope not. I wouldn't want to feel this terrible and still be OK." My thoughts moved like goldfish, first making sensible patterns and then not. As slowly as they moved, they were too quick for me.

  Doewanit lifted his head as if he were lifting a bowling ball at the end of a soda straw. He squinted at the light and gingerly ran a hand through his hair. Sacks hung under his eyes. Bursts of red blotched his face. He smacked his lips and sucked his teeth like an old man. He grunted.

  I grunted just to hold up my end. There was something about the credulity gas, a connection I'd missed. I'd seen it recently in the fish tank of my mind, and I just about had the facts lined up again when I sneezed. The sneeze was big and explosive, making Doewanit draw back from me.

  My nose no longer throbbed and my head was clear. I felt as fresh as a Beverly Hills lawn after a spring shower, but my comfort hadn't improved the looks of the office. Doewanit's face still looked as if it had been drawn on a burlap bag. The fish tank was gone and with it my bright idea. If I had not been imagining it all along.

  I smiled at Doewanit and he moaned. I said, "Sneezing cures hangovers." "The first I hear of it."

  "Cured mine."

  He looked at me sideways, then felt around in his desk and came up with a tissue. He took a big breath and blew hard. Looking very pale, he ran for the second door, got it open, and slammed it shut. He made disgusting noises into water. I walked to the window and looked down onto Sunset. Traffic flowed by smoothly. Tourists gawked. The smog was not life threatening. It was a beautiful day.

  The door to the bathroom opened and I turned around. Doewanit leaned against the jamb, looking a little better, but still not happy. He said, "Bay City. Hah!"

  I said, "Not all my ideas are good. Some of them aren't even smart. Sorry."

  He nodded as if he didn't want to nod. He shook hands with me and with Bill, and the two of us went out down the ancient hallway. Insect noises of small purposeless activity came from behind some of the doors. Some of the offices were as dead as they had been the night before. Downstairs, the light
was more natural but the same dark men were selling the same gaudy merchandise.

  In the car, I said, "Knighten Daise. You remember the address?"

  Bill tapped the side of his head and said, "The old bubble memory."

  I drove west and up a few blocks to Franklin.

  Chapter 6

  Knighten Daise Of The Foreign Legion

  THE last time I'd been to the Daise mansion, Mr. Daise and his daughter Heavenly had been haranguing each other about the family business. It took a lot of haranguing, I guess, because the business was Surfing Samurai Robots, the biggest producer of robots in the world. Bill was an SSR, one of the smaller, cheaper models, without the rippling muscles and the prerecorded personality.

  That last time Mr. Daise looked like a lobster.

  He'd done this to himself in an attempt to fool industrial spies and other enemies. I don't know if being a lobster had made him safer, but it allowed him to hiss in a strange nerveracking voice that made him sound as if he were trying to haunt a house.

  The houses on Franklin still looked like Greek temples or as if they should have had forty acres of cotton growing out back. The Daise mansion stood out from these pieces of stone fantasy like a tractor among racing cars. It was a square gray building that had the look of a penitentiary. Mr. Daise liked his security and he didn't care who knew it.

  At the bottom of the long sweeping drive I spoke into a squawk box and a quiet cultured voice answered—the voice of Davenport, the Daise's robotler. The gate swung open and I drove through a wide grassy field full of trees I knew were fake. Each tree was a sentry box from which an armed robot guard kept watch. If they hadn't been expecting me Davenport could have hosed off my remains after he picked up what he could in a teaspoon. At the top of the drive was a big shiny car that was brown the way sunsets are orange. Next to it my Belvedere looked like a lump of tinfoil.