Tubular Android Superheroes

by Mel Gilden

  I was not moving. I was barely breathing. I may have blinked.

  "After I take over Los Angeles, tyrannosaurs like Elvis will help me keep order. Dogs are boring. Tigers, even saber-toothed tigers, are not so impressive." Without raising his voice, the android Mr. Will said, "Kill, Elvis." The rex seemed to understand. Like a dancer, it stalked toward me.

  I backed away, of course. I wanted to run, but I was certain that if I did the rex would be on me the way a cat is on a mouse and the show would be over but for the screaming. I slid back and back across the floor, the android Mr. Will following me and the rex like a referee— keeping close but not getting in the way. I don't know what Darken Stormy was doing.

  I bumped against something hard. It was a lab bench. I backed around it till its width was between me and the rex. We watched each other across the table like a couple of billiard champions. Its fingers twitched and its tongue took another swipe at the air, then it came after me again.

  I picked up a beaker and threw it at the rex. The beaker thumped off the rex's chest and crashed against the floor. The rex made a sound from before time and walked through the glass shards as if they were fallen leaves.

  I could throw more glassware at it, but that would be harder on the glassware than it was on the rex. I wasn't worried about making it angry. It was angry already.

  We circled another lab bench. The android Mr. Will called out, "Play him, Marlowe. He likes it." He laughed, sounding like something behind a padded door.

  I passed the ladder and thought about squeezing around the big gear and up it. Not much room. Besides, going up when there was only one way down was too much like being trapped. Besides, while I was climbing the rex might decide to use my foot for a teething ring.

  I feinted from side to side, which seemed to confuse the rex. It stopped, watching me, a little fascinated. Sure, I could keep it up for another few minutes before I got nauseous and tired. I could dance with the rex some more, backing into this and that, pitching bits of Mr. Will's expensive chemistry set. But the fact was there was no place to go. It was just a matter of endurance, and I knew too well who had more of that. I broke and ran.

  Behind me the rex breathed and shuffled through broken glass. The sound was getting closer, but that was OK because I had a plan. I was not confident it would work, but it would keep me occupied while the rex got close enough to tear me into hamburger.

  I backed into the side of the vat of android ur-glop. The wall was warm as blood and rose above my head the height of my body. The rex did not close in right away, but kind of circled around while it whipped its tongue at me and made occasional hissing sounds, as if it were inflated and air were escaping. It was enjoying itself. Nobody had given it a workout like this for a long time. Life was boring when all you did was live behind a wall and eat dino-chow.

  With no more thought than a character in a play I slid sideways along the wall until I came to a ladder I knew had to be there. I turned around and began to climb with my head twisted so I could watch the rex approaching. I was halfway up before the rex reached the bottom of the ladder. It hung a single talon from a rung and narrowed its eyes to watch me. The rex was probably some kind of dinosaur genius because it figured out what to do. It climbed.

  It rocked from side to side, having barely enough room between the ladder and the wall of the vat to get its toes over the rungs. It was ungainly, it was awkward, it was a joke, but it kept coming.

  I reached the top of the ladder and walked out onto the catwalk that bridged the vat. It boomed like a drum head with every step I took. A thin silver cable threaded through uprights ran down each side, the only handrails. Below, android ur-glop bubbled and fell back onto itself. The stuff was an unhealthy white, the color of things that live under rocks, and had the pungent organic smell of food forgotten in the back of a refrigerator. The catwalk shook when the rex stepped onto it.

  The android Mr. Will stood below looking up at us the way a kid looks at the star atop a Christmas tree. He said, "It's a natural-born killer, Marlowe. You can avoid it for a little while, but you can't escape."

  I backed out to the middle of the catwalk with my hand on the thin silver cable. It was warm because of the muggy heat rising from the android ur-glop. The rex took small hops toward me, shaking the catwalk with each one. I watched the rex carefully and calculated exactly when it would have only one hop left before it leapt onto me and tore me apart like an old paper napkin. I watched. I'd never watched anything so hard in my life.

  And then the rex made that last hop and then I reached out to it while it was still in the air and grabbed a small, ridiculously fragile wrist. At the same moment the android Mr. Will cried, "No!" and I swung the rex through the cable, snapping it. The rex howled in a prehistoric way, like a band saw cutting sheet tin. It hit the ur-glop hard, splashing some onto me. The rex thrashed around, melting as it did so, as it was reduced from a frightening monster to an unfinished soap sculpture to a suggestion of a lizard shape to nothing at all.

  A long, narrow shape that could have been an arm or the remains of a tail beat against the surface one final time, flinging ur-glop over the side of the vat and onto the android Mr. Will. He screamed in a way that still gives me nightmares. One of the android failures joined in.

  I ran to the end of the catwalk while ineffectually trying to clean myself with a handkerchief. Below, near the wall of the vat, the android Mr. Will was writhing under the vile android ur-glop like a creature being burned alive—arms waving high in the air, head thrown back, still screaming. He was melting. I never meant the android Mr. Will to be punished this way, but I couldn't stop it. I watched because I couldn't look away. He did not suffer long. In less than a minute all that was left of him was his clothes and a small white puddle of fizzing stuff that smelled like the stuff in the vat.

  Darken Stormy came over and watched with me as the stuff stopped fizzing. Without looking at her I said, "That's the end of that, I guess."

  "The end," she said.

  The way she said it made me look at her. When I did I suddenly felt very tired. A pistol was in her hand and it was pointing at me. There was only one thing for me to do. It was corny, a cliche, but necessary. I put up my hands.

  Chapter 27

  Fully Equipped

  HER hand shook, but not enough. She wasn't nervous but angry. She said, "You've ruined everything."

  "I thought I was making it all better."

  "One quip too many," she said. And then again, more softly. The pistol steadied.

  I don't like to upset people who have my life in their hands, so I said politely, "How have I ruined everything?"

  Her face pinched together, getting as ugly as it could ever be. She looked like a little girl who had been too long at the fair and still was angry about going home. The hand holding the pistol didn't seem to be part of her; it was a statue's hand, hard, motionless, watching me with the pistol's single eye. I took a step back, hoping the motion looked natural, just something somebody would do while standing around talking. The pistol didn't move but it didn't go off either.

  "He promised me immortality. Eternal life. Eternal beauty."

  "Who did?"

  "Mr. Will, of course."

  I took another step back. She followed, but it was just a natural social move. She didn't think anything of it. I backed up more whenever I thought I could get away with it.

  "Which Mr. Will?"

  "What do you mean? Oh. The android. He promised to make me immortal and we would run Los Angeles together through the other androids, and now you've ruined everything. I'll never get my android body."

  "And Los Angeles will have to take care of itself. I'm sorry," I said, trying hard to sound as if I meant it. "But maybe it's all for the best. I wouldn't want to spend the rest of eternity in a body made of glop."

  "Easier than being a vampire." She went ahead and bit her lip. She had been right to fight it. Lipstick got onto her teeth and smudged her skin. The red looked just as sl
oppy and unsanitary as it would look on anybody else. "And the real Mr. Will will probably fire me."

  "Well," I said, "you probably won't have much time to work for him anyway. The police will probably insist on monopolizing you."

  "The police? Why?" The pistol rose and fell like a dinghy on a lake. I stepped back. We were halfway across the floor now and she didn't seem to have noticed. I was the center of Darken Stormy's attention.

  "Short memory. Darken. Irv Doewanit is dead, remember?"

  "I'm sorry about your friend, Mr. Marlowe, but I didn't kill him."

  "Danny Macabre isn't so sure. He guided me down here in exchange for my not telling the police about your connection to the 'Surf City' music box."

  She bit her lip again, but her gun hand was as steady as ever. She might have been modeling guns. "Poor Danny," she said, caressing his memory with the words. Then she was back with me. She said, "How did you find him?"

  "I'm a detecting professional."

  That made her smile. It was a nice smile even with lipstick all over it. She said, "I didn't kill him, Mr. Marlowe, or even order it done. I suppose it was silly of me, but I wanted that music box. Mr. Will the android said he'd help me get it. He sent an android to Whipper's house and found your friend there. Your friend made a mistake and got in the android's way. The android was a bodyguard model and not bred for subtlety. There was a struggle. Your friend was just something between the android and its assignment. Killing him was an accident. That's all."

  "You could be sorry."

  "We both have a lot to be sorry about."

  By this time I was leaning against the jamb of the conference room door. Gas from the evaporated Melt-O-Mobile hung in the smoggy air like bad feelings and mixed with the cooties from the android ur-glop that had splashed on me. The vague smell of credulity gas got stronger.

  I backed into the room and sat in one of the chairs that had a back like the lid of a coffin. Darken stood over me with her pistol. From that distance a blind man could not have missed.

  Darken said, "Good-bye, Mr. Marlowe." She made a stable stance by spreading her legs tight against her dress, and held her pistol in both hands. She aimed it at me.

  I said, "I'm your friend, Darken. You don't want to shoot me."

  Doubt crossed her eyes like a shadow over water, but she lowered the gun and gave me her big smile. "Mr. Marlowe," she said as if she were making a big profit by selling me back my own teeth.

  "Come on, Darken," I said. "Let's get out of this smell."

  "Right."

  She let me take the gun away from her and we strolled across the lab to the cell where the A party was stashed. I moved her along pretty fast, not knowing when the credulity gas would wear off.

  "Get us out of here," Anderson Charles said, a nasty whine in his voice.

  I found the big key in the wooden box the android Mr. Will had taken off the wall and came back with it. I opened the cell and the guests streamed out. I guided Darken Stormy into the cell and locked the door. Not worried, just curious, she said, "What am I doing in here?"

  "You'll be happy," I said.

  She nodded, looking around as if appreciating the sultan's palace.

  I went to where the movers and shakers had clotted in the walkway between two lab benches. They all tried to shake my hands at once. When I ran out of hands the rest patted me on the back. I would have let them continue but I still had questions. The answers were not down here. Besides, the place made me nervous. Too much death was down here. Too many mistakes had been made and not paid for.

  As I herded my crowd toward the curtain with the horse on it Darken called after us, "Marlowe, you bastard."

  We stopped and looked back at Darken. She was gripping the bars. Her head could not quite fit between them. "Let me out."

  "You're happy," I told her.

  "Like hell I am."

  "Somebody will be back for you soon."

  She was a nice woman who was too pretty for her own good—pretty enough that she thought beauty was all she had going for her. So she'd conspired with somebody who'd promised her that she would never lose it. She didn't mind that she had helped kidnap people and get people murdered. It didn't matter that the intention of her employer was to take over a city and use dinosaurs to keep people in line. Nothing mattered but her beauty. I felt a little sorry for her but not much. Everybody has problems, and being a dish did not seem as bad as some others I'd heard about.

  She was still shouting my name as I ducked behind the thick curtain with the horned horse on it.

  Once my crowd entered the long stone tunnel they began to complain. They wanted to go back the way they had come—through the civilized front door where VIPs enter. But the android Mr. Will had stationed guards up there. People had to sign in and out. It was all very clean and official. I thought Danny Macabre's back door would be easier to deal with despite the dirt and the darkness and the strange noises, and I told them so. Only partly convinced, they moved on but they continued to grumble.

  On our way through the locker room we met a very thin old man with wisps of cotton on his head that may have been hair. He had a towel in one hand and a bottle of shampoo in the other. In-between he was naked. When he saw us his eyebrows went up and he gasped and ran away, his towel covering his ass. The newscaster bimbo made a cynical smile. I told Ms. Fergusson she could open her eyes.

  When I stepped into the corridor behind the wall mirror, it was darker than I remembered it. We had no flashlight—the android Mr. Will had been right about my not being prepared— but after the lights behind my eyes stopped popping I could see a surprising amount of light that filtered in from the top and sides, giving the place the grainy look of an old movie.

  After that it was easy. Just a quick walk along the Civil Defense tunnel and up through the trapdoor under the bonanza feed and grain sign. I was hoping to sneak across the street without talking to Danny Macabre, but he was leaning against the outside of his tiny shack of an office waiting for us.

  My people were looking around at the signs, surprised at where we had come up, when Danny approached, smiling. While his eyes searched the crowd his smile collapsed like an ice-cream cone under a fat man and he said, "Where is she?"

  "Down there," I said. I was weary, even more weary than I had been when Darken Stormy had pulled a gun on me. A lot had happened since then.

  "Why? Is she OK?"

  "She's fine. With her looks, even after she's arrested she'll probably be fine. Besides, she didn't kill anybody."

  He looked in the direction of the trapdoor and I said, "Don't even think about helping her escape. Right now she has a chance. If she runs away her chance will make a caraway seed look like a watermelon."

  Danny thought about that, then grumbled, "Damned music box," as if he were alone.

  I agreed with him, walked past the two limousines and out the gate. My crowd followed me. While we waited for the traffic to clear I looked back and saw Danny standing in the same place, moving his head as if trying to locate the source of a strange noise.

  Room twenty-eight of the Shady Pines Motel looked like backstage at the circus. People were sprawled across the two king-sized beds; others sat on the floor. Flopsie and Mopsie sat on the sink counter. Hanger had found a candy bar somewhere and was trying to feed it to Mr. Daise. He kept telling her to stop but she wouldn't. Nobody but Hanger and Mr. Daise were talking. Everybody in the room had the empty eyes of people waiting for a bus. Bill was in a corner as still as he'd be if I'd turned him off. I wondered if the woman at the desk had seen these people come in. I wondered if she cared.

  When I came in with more people Hanger stopped what she was doing. Zamp stood up. Everybody looked at us. Then the dam broke and the reunion began. All these exclusive people knew each other. Maybe they wouldn't see each other for months or years at a time. Maybe they didn't even like each other much. But they'd all come through the fire together and that did things to people. They greeted each other like family.
/>   The surfers gathered around me, and Bill brought me the room key and said, "Some party, huh. Boss?"

  I agreed that it was, told the surfers how bitchen it was to see them again. Zamp and I briefly touched noses.

  "You OK?" Zamp said.

  "I'm tired."

  "Let's go home."

  I didn't ask him whether he meant Malibu or T'toom. At the moment it didn't matter as long as nobody pulled a gun or a dinosaur on me. I said, "I have something to do first."

  I stepped across the minefield of people to where Mr. Will was sitting on a bed next to Bingo. Bingo hugged me and sat back down. She patted Mr. Will's hand. He'd lost his tie, and his shirt was spotted with dirt. Mr. Will saw me coming and came to meet me. We shook hands and he said, "I don't know how you found us, sir, but I am delighted." He winked. "We could use a man like you in plant security."

  "Not just now, Mr. Will. But you can answer a question for me." Conversations exploded around us like fireworks. Bingo watched us, hungry to hear what we had to say. Nobody else was any more interested than the table lamps.

  "Anything." He looked as if he meant it.

  I said, "Where did that android come from?"

  Mr. Will turned a nice rosy pink. He glanced at Bingo but wouldn't look either of us in the eye.

  I said, "You must have had something in mind besides he should take over your life."

  Words rushed out of him. He said, "I wanted to be immortal."

  I nodded. I could almost finish his story now, but I wanted to hear it from him.

  When I didn't say anything he went on. "I grew an android of myself, hoping that I could put my consciousness into it."

  "Androids don't last long enough to be immortal."

  "I thought maybe my son Whipper would help with that. If Bingo is hugging you, you probably know Whipper?"

  "We've met. Go on."