Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  "That ought to impress him."

  "We can't just let him dog us."

  "He probably doesn't expect you to let him. But he won't let you dog him either. That gives you sort of a problem in common." Whipper shrugged and said, "I don't think it'll help."

  Whimsical fool that I am, I said, "Max Toodemax and your father are probably personal friends." Whipper shook his head and stared out the window.

  On the other side of the hills the air was much hotter, and you could see it better. It had a hard chemical smell and caught in my throat, making breathing a bit of an effort. Breathing would be an effort even if you didn't have my nose. The nasty smell of the credulity gas teased me, but it never became stronger than the smell of romance the morning after. Melt-O-Mobile dispensers were few and far between. Evidently Mr. Will's products had not yet caught on in the valley.

  Whipper got me down onto Ventura Boulevard

  , where a minimall was on every corner that did not have a gas station. Had I been hungry, I could have eaten Italian, Indian, Thai, or if I searched long enough, even American. Buildings of two or three stories could be had in any color as long as it was pink or white.

  The address we were looking for was four stories high and entirely fronted with glass, making it match the medical buildings on either side. That would be Mr. Daise's idea of security. All that glass didn't seem to bother him.

  I drove around to the back, where I traded quips with a guard who would not let us into the parking lot until I mentioned that I was a friend of Mr. Daise here to see Caria DeWilde. He called somebody on a telephone and a moment later I was looking for a place to park. The lot was crowded. Melt-O-Mobiles were obviously no more popular among DeWilde's Bunch than they were with the valley's other residents. I found a spot under a eucalyptus tree whose trunk was shedding bark that looked like scraps of paper. Its clean smell was given a hard metallic edge by the smog.

  Whipper sweated a few quarts of water crossing the lot, and then we were freezing inside the building. Caria DeWilde's office was on the top floor.

  We rode up with a short fat guy carrying Chinese food in a brown paper bag almost as tall as he was. The fourth floor hallway was plain and painted the piercing yellow of a mad dog's eyes. Gray hunks of lab equipment stood against the walls. In one of the rooms, somebody laughed. An intense woman ran from one room to another taking only enough notice of her surroundings not to run into them.

  We found Caria DeWilde's office and went into a small room the same color as the hallway, though somebody had tried to hide the walls with prints of mountains rising above serene forests. A thin woman behind a metal desk asked us to wait for a moment. She had a voice no larger than she was. We sat in folding chairs, trying to warm the metal with our bottoms. The floor was a swirl of unhappy green that had seen a lot of use.

  "Mr. Marlowe?"

  Whipper and I looked up. Standing at the door to the inner office was a robot the same bronze color as the Daises' robotler. It was substantial—nobody's idea of a ballet dancer—but it had the unmistakable curves of a woman. Hair nearly the same color as her brightwork was piled on top of her head. A lab coat was painted on over a red dress, which was painted on too. Holding her hair in place was an SSR headband. Of course.

  In a voice like a tiny glass bell, Caria DeWilde invited us into her office, which was a little bigger than the waiting room but crowded with paper, thick books, and more lab equipment. Stacks of files covered her desk. She introduced herself and shook hands—surprisingly warm but not very soft—then sat with her back to a picture window that would have given her a good view of the hills if the smog had not trailed across them like a dirty veil.

  "Whipper Will?" she said with her eyebrows up. Whipper said, "Yes," as if admitting he drew mustaches on monuments but was proud of it. "Aren't you in the camp of your enemy?" "Dad and I are not so cool at the moment. I'm just here with Zoot—Mr. Marlowe." She looked at me and smiled with all her teeth. They were perfect. She said, "Mr. Daise said I could expect you."

  "He doesn't lack anything but insecurity, does he?"

  "No." She glanced at Whipper again. He really bothered her.

  I said, "Look, Ms. DeWilde, Whipper knows a lot more about androids than I do. He's here because he might ask a question that I wouldn't even think of. But let's say he's a spy for his father. Let's say when he leaves here, he'll run tell Mr. Will that you know something nobody knows you know. Do you know anything worth the price of a phone call?"

  She made a quick drum roll on the desk with her fingers. I don't know why SSR designed robots to act nervous but they did a good job of it. Eventually she stopped drumming and said, "Mr. Daise told me to talk to you. What do you want to know?"

  "A lot of people seem to think there's some connection between the credulity gas and the androids and the Melt-O-Mobiles. My guess is that even Mr. Will thinks so, though he doesn't talk about it much."

  DeWilde sighed very realistically. She didn't say anything but rummaged under her desk and came up a moment later with a thin book that had a black pebbled cover. She opened it and absentmindedly turned the loose-leaf pages, browsing as if she were alone and killing an afternoon. People passed in the hallway. Somewhere a filing cabinet clicked shut. DeWilde said, "We have a lot of evidence that the credulity gas exists, but it's not what we'd call scientific evidence."

  "What would we call it?" Whipper said.

  "It's anecdotal. Just reports by untrained observers under conditions that were far from controlled."

  "Enough of even that kind of evidence should mean something," I said.

  DeWilde shook her head. "Enough was never enough for flying saucers."

  She was right, of course. If she hadn't been, I would have become an exhibit at Pasadena Tech a long time ago. I said, "I've seen it work."

  "More anecdotal evidence." The thought of hearing my story did not excite her.

  Whipper said, "You must be doing controlled experiments."

  She would have blushed had she been able. She stood up, said, "Come on. I'll show you something," and walked out of the room.

  We followed her down the hallway to an open doorway at the end of it. Inside was a big room with lab benches down one long side. One short wall was glass. Beyond the glass were two smaller rooms. Inside one, seated in a chair, was an android. It looked faded and a little ratty—like a doll that had been out in the weather too long. Inside the other was a Melt-O-Mobile. Watching the two small rooms were people in lab coats sitting behind control panels.

  DeWilde said, "How old would you say that android is?"

  "At least six months," Whipper said.

  "We've had it nearly that long. The Melt-O-Mobile is new. Go ahead, Charlie."

  Charlie did something to his control panel and the Melt-O-Mobile began to fizz. While it disappeared, DeWilde said, "We've done every test we can think of on both of them. As the android goes stale it gives off a gas with a complicated formula but which seems to have no effect on any animal we've tried, up to and including humans." She peered hard at me. I tried to look as human as possible.

  DeWilde smiled. "We call the gas android cooties." The smile was gone as if it had never been, and she went on. "The gas the Melt-O-Mobiles effervesce into is different, but it is also benign. After testing them separately we mixed the two gases in various proportions. Still nothing significant. As far as we can determine, if there is a credulity gas neither androids nor Melt-O-Mobiles have anything to do with it."

  I looked at Whipper. He was looking at the floor. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he was just looking for paper clips. He didn't seem happy about it.

  I thanked Caria DeWilde. She asked us to remember her if we dug up anything she could use—something more than anecdotal, I suppose—and we left.

  The drive back to Malibu was quiet. We were almost at the Topanga Canyon offramp when Whipper said, "I told you Dad was OK."

  I agreed with him to the extent of saying, "You did."

  When we got back
to Malibu Zamp and Bill ran out to the garage to meet us. Bill was his usual self but Zamp was no gayer than a funeral barge. He said, "The androids came back. They got everybody."

  Chapter 8

  Everything But The Girl

  OF course, they hadn't gotten everybody. Bill and Grampa Zamp were still here. Zamp had been out surfing with a bot that Mustard had loaned him. By the time Bill ran out to get him the house was already empty.

  Whipper and Zamp and I righted the furniture that had fallen over, then we stood in the middle of the living room making the nervous purposeless gestures that people make when they don't know what to do. Bill was sitting on the couch. Not much bothered him, but I thought this might. He'd failed me.

  Whipper asked the question before I had a chance to. He said, "Didn't we tell you to whoop?"

  "Sure. I remember. Bubble memory." His bubble memory pleased him.

  Whipper stroked his forehead.

  I said, "Did you whoop, Bill?"

  "Sure. I whooped loud."

  "And the androids took everybody away anyhow."

  "Right, Boss."

  I looked at Whipper. He looked at me. Together, we said, "Earplugs!"

  Whipper threw himself into a chair and held his head in his hands. He mumbled.

  "What?" Zamp said.

  He looked at a place between me and Zamp, the strain making his face look like a crushed paper cup. He nearly shouted: "This isn't like Dad. It's not his style."

  "Did you have another suspect in mind?"

  "You're the detective, dammit!"

  I didn't say anything. Nothing clever enough came to mind. I saw Zamp glance at me, but instead of saying anything he sat at one end of the couch.

  Whipper leapt to his feet and ran to the kitchen, where he called the police. Back in the living room he sat down, stood up, sat down again. He looked around the room as if he knew clues were there somewhere, hidden like Easter eggs. "They made a mistake," he said.

  I grunted. He didn't want to hear me talk anyway.

  "They took Bingo."

  He almost couldn't say her name. He stopped looking for clues and studied the dust in one corner of the room. Probably he wasn't looking at the dust at all.

  "What—?" Zamp began. I waved him into silence and said, "We're not entirely without options here."

  Whipper said nothing. He barely breathed.

  " 'Oh no?' you say. 'No,' says I."

  This did nothing to perk him up.

  I said, "Your father took the surfers as hostages because he wants you to improve the androids for him. You could go back to work for him. It could buy us some time."

  "Time?" Whipper said, not quite daring to be interested.

  "If you go back he'll probably take reasonable care of Bingo and the others, holding their welfare over you until he gets what he wants. If you don't go back he's liable to do something desperate, if only to prove he means business."

  Not really angry at me, Whipper shouted, "This isn't like him. He's a businessman, not a gangster."

  I wanted to suggest that people change but decided not to bother. Quietly I said, "Did you have any other suspects?"

  He shook his head.

  I said, "Call him. Tell him you're coming back to work. It'll buy us time."

  We sat in the living room for a long while. Even with the four of us there it seemed to be a lot emptier than it was. The walls radiated loneliness. Outside, people talked and joked up and back. Wind blew, and the surf, as surf will, continued to crawl in from Japan. The sea breeze was touched with credulity gas but no harder than with a mother's kiss.

  Whipper went into the kitchen and punched more numbers. He said, "This is Whipper Will. I want to talk to my father." A moment later, he said, "I don't care what kind of meeting he's in. After what happened, he owes me a little of his time." Another moment rumbled by like a heavy truck. Whipper made a noise that might have been a bad word and the phone was slammed back into its cradle. He stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, nothing in his eyes but hatred and pain, if eyes ever contain anything at all.

  Whipper said, "All of a sudden he's playing hard to get. He's in meetings, getting ready for the trade show tonight."

  "He'll be there?"

  "That's what she said."

  "We'll go."

  Zamp said, "We only have two free tickets.'

  "Whipper and I have to go."

  Zamp's nose twitched. He said, "They're my tickets."

  I knew that eventually we would be forced to buy another ticket, but I didn't have time to mention it because somebody knocked at the front door. It was a polite knock, but it would want answering. Unless it was somebody selling religion or encyclopedias, it could only be the police.

  They came in, smooth and professional as a well-oiled engine. There were three of them, two in uniform and one in a brown suit. The one in the suit even wore a hat, which was unusual enough for California, but over his arm he carried a trench coat that in the Malibu heat was as useful as a butter chum. He was tall enough for basketball and wide enough for boxing. A chin like a brick and twinkling eyes made him look like a TV detective. Some people might have trouble taking him seriously.

  "Sergeant Preston," he said, and shook hands all around. While Bill pumped him, I said wonderingly, "Of the Yukon?"

  He looked at me as if he'd expected better and said, "No. Of the valley."

  Whipper was in no mood, but I laughed. "Very quick," I said.

  "Not really," Sergeant Preston said. "I've been asked that question before. Mind if we look around?" He pried himself loose from Bill and put his hand into a pocket.

  "Clues," Whipper said, and nodded.

  The uniformed boys went to work while Sergeant Preston sat down and took out a notebook. He licked the tip of a pencil and asked us to tell our story. Zamp did most of the talking. Then Sergeant Preston said, "What about the bot?"

  "Tell him what happened. Bill," I said.

  "What happened," Bill told him.

  Sergeant Preston's eyebrows went up and Whipper shook his head. He looked even more tired than I felt. I said, "Tell him about when the androids took away the surfers."

  "Sure, Boss. I know that one," Bill said proudly, and he began. To the astonishment of everybody in the room. Bill played it back exactly as it happened. We heard the shouts of the surfers, Bill's whoops, furniture falling over, heavy running. Bill made a sound like a door slam that was so realistic it was all I could do not to check if somebody had just come in. He said, "The end," and stopped.

  Sergeant Preston laughed and closed his notebook. "If we don't find anything, we might have him do that into a tape recorder."

  I shook my head and said, "I knew radio would make a comeback."

  Sergeant Preston stood up and said, "Patter. I've heard about you."

  "Me?" I said, genuinely surprised and immediately suspicious.

  "A short guy with a beak who solves crimes. Not the beak, the guy. I hear that trouble is your business." "I'd like to stop, but you know how trouble is." He frowned at the carpet and looked at me.

  "Chandler fan?"

  "I guess I don't hide it very well."

  "Me too." He shook hands with me again, but this time he meant it.

  The uniformed policemen came back to him and said they'd gotten all they could out of the, room, which wasn't much.

  At the front door Sergeant Preston turned to me and said, "You plan on looking into this?"

  "I don't want to step on any toes." Which was not an answer and he knew it.

  "No, no. Go right ahead. But if anything turns up remember you have friends downtown."

  I told him I would. He and the uniformed types got into a police car and went away. They didn't use the siren, but people stayed out of their way anyhow.

  The afternoon was long. Whipper spent most of it out in back, facing a scene that people from the middle of the country paid big bucks to see—water, sand, healthy bodies not too weighted down with clothes.
To him it was just another day at the beach.

  I wanted to go out and do some detecting, but I didn't know where to start. My investigations into credulity gas seemed to have hit a brick wall. I could call Mr. Daise and tell him that, but he might get the impression I was working for him. He would feel he had the right to chew me out. I wasn't in the mood to be chewed on.

  I could have searched for Bingo and the other surfers. If Mr. Will was not behind the abduction, I had no idea who might be. Evidently searching the house had not told the professionals much either. I could have spent the afternoon at Willville, wherever it was, but Mr. Will's security people would certainly not be amused at my poking sticks under private rocks. That might hurt the surfers more than help them. I'd end up at Willville eventually, of course, but I wanted to talk to Mr. Will first. Kind of by mistake-like, he might drop a clue that might tell me which rock to poke under.

  The Sun crawled down the sky, sneaking up on the horizon, and the breeze turned cool. Whipper went out for chicken and brought it back in a cardboard box as substantial as a Melt-O-Mobile. We ate the chicken, but we would have gotten as much pleasure eating the box. Nobody spoke. We just ate because we had to eat. When we were done Whipper got into the loudest Hawaiian shirt he owned and we were ready to go. He rode shotgun and Zamp sat in back with Bill, who gave directions to the Convention Center.

  It was the kind of silky Southern California night the Chamber of Commerce would like to bottle and send to Chicago in the winter. It smelled of the sea and wild, impetuous high jinks. The sky was the usual gray blanket, but the ocean sparkled as if stars were floating just under the surface.

  I turned toward downtown on the Santa Monica Freeway. Traffic was light, the way Caltrans would have you believe it would be if they were allowed to build just one more freeway. Just one more. And then another one.

  We drifted east and slowed at a traffic knot that we rode in bumper to bumper until I got off and maneuvered along one-way streets that were crowded with big cars riding much too low to the ground. The big dark shapes of buildings hunched over us showing lights where offices were being cleaned. The smell of credulity gas tickled my nostrils like the blade of a knife. It seemed to be everywhere now, but here it was not strong enough to work. At least none of the open stores were being mobbed.