Marlowe and the Spacewoman (14 page)

“There’s one slight problem, Nina.  I can’t walk.  Both my legs are broken.”

“Still not a problem.  I can carry you.  But you’ll need to let go of my hand first.”

Marlowe let go.

“Alright, we’re almost there.”  Nina stood up on the hood and hoisted Marlowe with her.  “This won’t work, I’m off-balance.  Hang on.”  She flung Marlowe over her shoulder like a rag doll, evoking a flurry of shrieks and groans from him.  Vision momentarily left him, and then returned, displaying Nina’s back.  “That’s better.  Get ready, I’m going to jump.  And…now!”

For a split second, Marlowe felt the thrill of free fall again.  But just for a split second.  Then Nina’s feet hit the ground with a hard thud, she grunted, and Marlowe’s vision faded again as the shock wave of impact hit him.  As his vision cleared, a muffled explosion sounded behind them.  Marlowe bent his head up, and saw the constable pushing out the door of his flitter.  Huffing and puffing, the officer popped out of the vehicle, his blaster already drawn.  The gun spat a few blasts of jagged fire when suddenly the sun exploded and everything went white.

The constable’s shooting faltered as he looked up into the sky.  Marlowe knew better, and just watched as the officer’s iris implants went black, trying to block the intense light.  Surprisingly, the rest of the anti-matter bomb was pretty unimpressive.  Anticlimactic, even.  The blast wave hit next, a faint, tickling wall of heat.  Air blew past them momentarily, and then was sucked back into the vacuum created by the explosion, but it wasn’t a terribly strong wind.  Even the sound of the explosion, which reached them next, seemed like an ordinary, everyday sort of pyrotechnic blast.

Nina didn’t even break stride, bounding forward until suddenly Marlowe was staring at the roof of the Studebaker, and felt the soft cushions of the seats underneath him.

“Home!” shouted Nina.

“Yes, home,” croaked Marlowe.  

The car started moving.  Marlowe felt it start into a turn, and then there was no sound but the hum of the magnetics, and no motion but the rough bob and drop of the car on its severely overstressed shocks.  

“You were right.  That wasn’t much of a blast.”

“Anti-matter’s too damned expensive to use any more than you need.”  Marlowe shifted painfully to look over to Nina.  “The bomber used just enough to cause the building to collapse.  Poor Tray.”

For the moment, at least, Marlowe let all thoughts of both cases, his murder and Nina’s identity, leave his head.  He idly wondered about the surprise House had waiting for him, but found it difficult not to let that that kiss, that wonderful, soft, warm kiss, overwhelm all his thought processes.  

Nina interrupted his reverie, her voice guiding him out of the painkiller-induced fog he’d been floating in.  “How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been worse.  Both legs badly broken, but the nano probes are working on them as we speak.  I’d really like to talk about happened up there, just before we jumped.  It was very nice, but a bit unexpected.”

Nina kept her eyes looking straight ahead out the windshield.  “I’ve been out of circulation, as it were, for a long time.  And before that, I didn’t exactly have my preferred choice as a boyfriend.  I just, well, if I was going to go out, I wanted it to be on a high note.  I hope you don’t mind.”

“Hey, any time.  Really.  I didn’t mind at all,” he croaked out.

Marlowe wasn’t sure because of the painkillers, but he thought she might be blushing.  Or maybe the gamma ray burst from the bomb had caused a slight burn.  There was a long, awkward silence as Marlowe strived, unsuccessfully, to come up with something more to say.

Nina cleared her throat.  “Nano probes, huh?   You need to explain to me what those things are,” she said, her eyes looking everywhere but directly at Marlowe.

Marlowe rushed into the comfort of familiar territory.  “We have a bit of a drive ahead of us.  I suspect the traffic will be pretty bad, what with all the rubberneckers staring up into the sky right now.  Plenty of time to explain everything.  About the nano probes, I mean.”

CHAPTER 8

LOW COST ETHICS

Explaining the nano probes only took a couple of minutes.  It turned out Nina was familiar with the concept of sub-nanometer machines.  But each answer Marlowe provided spawned more questions, like a hydra with questions for heads.  The constant questioning as they plodded along through traffic irritated Marlowe, and faced with the choice of sulking in his seat and feeling the awful pain of nano probe bone reconstruction or explaining the reality of the City to Nina while feeling the awful pain of nano probe bone reconstruction, Marlowe was inclined to sulk.  But Nina had proven invaluable in the recon parlor encounter, and he realized she might prove even more valuable if she understood the workings of the world she’d been plunged into.  Because, despite a total lack of hard evidence, he found himself convinced of the veracity of her story.

“First, one of the fundamentals.  The City stretches out hundreds of kilometers in all directions.”

“I know, I could see it from orbit.  I saw a lot of large cities as I came in.  Before we left, the futurists ran through a lot of scenarios about what to expect upon our return.  Most of them involved sprawling metropolises.  The most disturbing possibility they came up with was a post-apocalyptic civilization on the brink of extinction.  If you ask me, that’s a picnic compared to what ended up actually happening.”

“The City is one of about a hundred major city-states, each with smaller burbs and boroughs clustered around them.  Most of their boundaries were established, at least initially, by the states of the Big Fed.  Things have changed since then, but that’s where we started.

“Some cities had more resources than others, and if you were on good terms with a city that had materials you needed, and you had materials they lacked, well, a mutually beneficial trading relationship followed.  The City lacks solid raw materials for construction.  But that hasn’t stopped the urban portion of the City from expanding outward.  We’ve antagonized a lot of our neighbors, so trade in raw materials isn’t free-flowing or cheap.  When the mob controlled the teamsters, they didn’t have any qualms cutting corners.  A lot of the buildings were constructed with what has affectionately come to be known as StyroCrete.”

“StyroCrete.  You mentioned that before, when we were driving to the roof.”

“A blend of sand, gravel, cement, water, and, unfortunately, Styrofoam.”

“How can you possibly have a safe building made of that?”

“Well, in point of fact, you can’t.  Oh, rebar helps.  And other building techniques hide the deficiencies from immediate notice.  But eventually, well, the parrots come home to roost, as it were.”

“So the zeppelins and electromagnetic fields are used to keep the buildings from collapsing?”

“Pretty much.  It was supposed to be temporary, but there hasn’t been a lot of money in the budget for retrofits.  And ever since the parrots wrested control of the teamsters from the mafia, the quality of building materials has increased dramatically.  Though avian feces levels in StyroCrete have spiked in recent years.  To be expected, I suppose.”

Nina stared out the window, eyes filled with appropriate fear of the buildings towering over them, quivering dogs straining against the zeppelins’ leashes in their desire to break free and plow into the ground.  Not a comforting thought when you were driving through a large number of them.

“Any other questions?”

“More than you can imagine.”

Traffic was still moving at a crawl.  “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“Well, what about you?  You look and act, sort of, like Humphrey Bogart.”

“I decided on a change.  I’d grown tired of Gervase.”

“Who?”

“Gervase Fen.  An even more obscure literary detective.  You’re actually only the third person to recognize Marlowe.  Of course, I didn’t model him after the actor most famous for portraying him.  I modeled this appearance on Bogart, whose performance I believe is the definitive interpretation, far better than David Hasselhoff’s more well-known portrayal.”

“But you LOOK like him!”

“I went down to one of the discount body sculpting parlors, flashed an image of Bogie over to the surgeon, and had my old face lifted off and the new one set down.  Hasn’t been that long yet.  Only a couple of months, and it still itches something fierce in the morning.  Not as bad as the first couple of weeks, but still irritating on occasion.”

“So you can just walk into a…body sculpting parlor, and get a face lift, just like that?”

“Well, the more cosmopolitan places have long waiting lists, usually because it’s fashionable to make rich people wait.  But I can’t afford those places.  There are a couple of mom and pop parlors I frequent.  No bad experiences yet.”  Marlowe winced momentarily as he remembered his Nero Wolfe period.  His very brief Nero Wolfe period.  “Well, no really bad experiences.”

“So do you change faces often then?”

“What do you mean by often?”  Marlowe gave her his best pensive look.  “I would imagine, for a person from a hundred years ago, that one face change would be more often than normal.”  

Nina crossed her arms.  “Let me rephrase the question.   How many times have you changed your face?”

“Let me see.”  Marlowe started doing the mental math.  “Eight or nine times, I think.  I’ve started to lose track.”

“So fairly often then.  What do you do with friends and family?  How do they recognize you after a face lift?”

“Friends?  What friends?”  Marlowe forced out a hollow laugh.  “People I work with, I let them know.  I update my profile on the CityNet, I send messages to their PDIs.  Heck, my PDI transmits a serial identification number, and those, believe it or not, are actually hard to fake.  I have pre-arranged code phrases where necessary, and, if it comes down to it, DNA profiling.  Plus my voice doesn’t change.  That’s a dead giveaway.  And some people, well, they don’t know and I see no reason to disabuse them of that notion.”  He smiled, all the time watching Nina’s face.  She absorbed it all without comment.  

Marlowe continued.  “As for family, well, my family, such as it is, keeps close tabs on me.  They probably know what my new face looks like before I do.”

“Why?” asked Nina.

“My brother just likes to be in the know, especially about people who have close physical access to him.”

“No, not that.  Why do you do it?”

Marlowe mulled this one over and found himself wishing traffic would speed up.  “I dunno.  No reason, I suppose.”

“Oh, come on,” said Nina.  “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

Marlowe thought back to each lift he’d had, looking for a common thread to them all.  Stress, unease, a need to feel clean, new again.  And always after a bad case.  Usually after a case involving the Governor and/or Obedere.  “A fresh start, I suppose.  Sometimes my work isn’t exactly...”  He trailed off.

“Not exactly what you had in mind?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”  Survival can be a bitch, he thought.  He felt his face start to flush, countermanded it with an order to the nano probes.  “Anything to dilute the family resemblance, if you know what I mean.”

Nina stayed silent and nodded, but Marlowe doubted she understood.  Even he didn’t understand most of the time.  

The car lumbered forward in fits and starts.  Nina had the sense to look outside for awhile, silent.  Then she cleared her throat.  “And that obese clown who I first encountered and his chamber of horrors?”

“Ah, I’d be careful there.  It’s not a good idea to badmouth Obedere or the other powerful elite.  You never know when a gnat buzzing in the window is really a Mark III Speak Easy flitterbug.  Next thing you know, you’re up on charges of slander, libel, sedition, treason, and conspiracy.”

“Oh.”

“But around me you’re fairly safe.  I employ countermeasures that aren’t available to the general public.  Obedere, as you probably know, is the Chief Minister of Policing, which unofficially makes him second in command of the City.  Normally, the Governor’s heir is second in command, but we have a tradition of the Chief Minister of Policing overthrowing the Governor.  My brother started it when he overthrew my father, and Obedere hopes to continue it.”

“Your brother is in charge of the City?”

“Shh!  Yes, he is, but he denies being my brother.  And doesn’t like it when other people bring it up.  Even me.”

Nina looked confused.  “I don’t get it.  If your brother is the governor, why are you going to discount body sculpting parlors?  And wearing such ratty clothing?”

“Hey, this clothing has saved my life more than once!  And as to the source of my apparent squalor, well, there’s nothing apparent about it – I’m just scraping by.”

“I’d expect you to be one of the elite.  Did you have a falling out with your brother?”

“Not in the way you’d expect.  Actually, it’s more a case of never having had a falling in with my brother.  Or my father, for that matter.  I grew up under one authoritarian governor, and alongside his successor.  And I have no doubts as to the type of governor Obedere would be.  I didn’t like the lifestyle then, and I don’t like it now, so I put as much distance as I’m allowed between myself and my family.  I’m just useful enough to be dragged into my brother’s intrigues occasionally, but most of the time I’m left to my own devices.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a private detective.  I right wrongs, protect the defenseless, defend the innocent, and incense the guilty.  I help people.  Perhaps it’s a case of guilt by association.  I don’t exactly advertise my ties to the Governor either.”

Nina just nodded.  “A noble thing.”

“Call it karma.  I’m a firm believer in karma.”

The Studebaker honked twice happily.

“No, karma.  K-A-R-M-A, you silly scrap heap.”

The car almost seemed to sag a little.  It certainly slowed down a hair.

Marlowe patted the dash.  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in you too.”

The car perked up and double honked again.

They’d broken clear of the traffic and were now approaching Marlowe’s neighborhood.  “I apologize in advance for the state of my house.  I didn’t know I’d be having company today, or I would have ordered the cleaners to dust themselves off and tidy up.  They do so enjoy a reason to come out of the closet.”

Nina just sighed.  “I’m sure it will be fine.”

They pulled up to the curb.  Nina got out first and walked around to Marlowe’s side of the car, making as if to pick him up.

“Not necessary.  I may be a bit stiff, and I won’t be running any marathons today, but I think I can walk under my own magnetics.”  Marlowe slowly climbed out of the car, standing unsteadily.  “I wouldn’t mind, however, the opportunity to lean against you as I walk.”

“You can walk?  But your legs were shattered!”

“I’ve got decent nano probes.”

“Damn.  Any chance I could get something like that?”

“It can certainly be arranged,” said Marlowe carefully, “but not anytime soon.  You’re a little too hot politically right now, so we need to resolve your legal status before you’ll be allowed to install them.  Of course, that does make keeping you alive for the time being a tad more troublesome.”

Nina smiled grimly.  “True enough.  And to think, when I saw our sun, and then the Earth, and knew I’d actually made it home, I thought there couldn’t be a luckier human being in the history of Humanity.  Boy, what a rude awakening that landing has been!”

“Don’t worry, Marlowe’s on the case.”

Nina looked at him with an intensity he hoped he wasn’t completely imagining.  The pain blockers coursing through his system were known to color perceptions.  

“You know, Marlowe, for some reason I find that very comforting.”  She sidled up to him and put her arm around his waist.  Marlowe put his arm over her shoulder, and with a huge grin he concealed by looking away, moved with her to the front door.  He saw, as he turned, a flock of birds take flight from under the eaves of a neighbor’s house.  They were too far away to identify.

The front door swung open, and a human voice reached Marlowe’s ears.  It sounded familiar.  As he entered, leaning heavily against Nina, he realized who it was.  It was the voice of that idiot City News newscaster.  He was blathering about the explosion over the City.

“House, why is the news on?”

In an attempt to be polite to Nina, House replied through the external wall speakers.  “Gomer wanted some noise in the background.  He said it was too quiet around here.”

“I kill you, ungrateful bastard!”

A frazzled old man burst out of the kitchen into the hallway, a large knife in one hand and a rolling pin in the other.  He had an unkempt white beard, a Fu Manchu mustache with one half seriously tangled around the knife, and straggly white hair splayed out like someone who just had about a million volts run through him.  His eyes were shiny, piercing black orbs of vitriolic hatred, the pupils different sizes, and his wiry body rushed spider-like and with unyielding determination towards Marlowe.