The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (7 page)

Rain was in the forecast, and rain was
on the way. He could smell it.

“
The traffic lights are
down to the right about fifty metres.” With an arm in the guard’s
careful possession, Scott had little choice but to allow himself to
be led off into yet another unknown. “I’m really sorry about this,
Mister. If you cross at the light and come back down the other
side, you’ll find there’s a park bench right across the
street.”

For obvious reasons, the guard would be
risking his employment for such a simple courtesy as taking Scott
directly over there. That would be all of forty-eight
feet.

***

Scott tapped his way along, killing
time and avoiding the dreadful thought that Betty had deserted him.
The alternatives weren’t much better. She might have been caught.
She might have given herself up in spite of her statements. She
might have simply gotten lost, or detained, or fallen off a roof or
something. It could be anything, really.

It was just as the man had said. He
found the intersection, listened to the signals, and the
cars.

There were few voices about, but the
vehicles were idling tamely enough and he set across on the
familiar pong-pong, pong.

Fifty metres north, and fifty metres
south. He counted his steps. His questioning stick, held in the
right hand and then the left, followed the gutter on his left and
then hit something on his right.

He stopped, and slowly explored it. It
was indeed a park bench. Across the street, he could sense the
security guard’s benevolent but ultimately impotent
watch.

Scott sat down.

Why didn’t Betty show up?

Think in the proper terms.

What I don’t know I can’t reveal under
torture.

Scott smiled, for the first time in
hours.

It was a bitter smile.

The realization that he could just get
on a bus and go home held its own insidious logic.

The trouble was that he wanted to know
what happened. And what happens next?

Good question, he admitted.

There was a peculiar whistle from the
park behind him, cutting through the noise of cars, trucks,
delivery vehicles and always that persistent hum of voices from
somewhere.

The whistle came again.

He’d heard that one a million
times.

It started off at a certain pitch, and
then it went up, and then it went down.

It was like a bosun’s pipe, only
electronic.

Scott was being hailed from somewhere
out in the darkness.

His heart thudded. It was closer, more
insistent now.

Aw, fucking Jesus Christ, what do I
do?

How do I know that’s even
her?

And yet it did make a weird kind of
sense—she’d been watching the area for hours, most
likely.

That had to be it. She'd been
waiting.

For fuck’s sakes

Ah, fuck it.

I need to fucking pee
anyways.

I might as well get this over
with—whatever happens.

He had the sudden urge to cross himself
or something, in spite of a strong overall atheism.

The trouble with atheism was that it
didn’t make much provision for hating God. It had always been a bit
of a contradiction for Scott.

Scott clambered awkwardly to his feet,
taking his time about it. There were certain to be bushes and trees
and arbitrarily-placed bedding plants and herbaceous
borders.

Standing there, he sighed
deeply.

The whistle came again, twice. He
turned, with his guts feeling terribly loose, and wobbly in the
knees after sitting around half the night.

He felt his way into the
unknown.

***

Scott disappeared into the forbidding
gloom.

The guard tore his eyes off the street
and went back to his regular duty of checking all the rest-rooms
for stragglers, and then making sure there were no other drunks or
druggies hiding away.

He had the coffee-pot and his
touch-tablet. What more did he need?

In another few hours, his relief would
show up and then he could go home, the wife, the kids, the dog and
the apartment filled with nine different kinds of noise.

Chapter Six

Someone coughed fifty feet to his left,
oddly muted by the small lungs and ill health of a familiar type.
It had to be a wino, someone living outdoors by the sounds of
it.

Scott wondered if he was spending the
night there, but shuffling footsteps indicated he was heading in
the opposite direction. If that was a woman, she was in rough
shape. A noisy group of people were somewhere nearby, a sports bar,
he thought. A grille, with a barbecue and big-screen TVs all over
the place. They were out on the patio.

The damp of the grass came in around
the edges of his shoes, above the rubber soles. He must tread
carefully.

Crickets muted momentarily and then
rose in song again after his passing. The cool breeze stirred the
branches and he ducked his head in reflex. Raising the stick, he
found nothing there.

He straightened up. The branches might
be five or ten metres up. The wind was very strong, and the trees
were rattling and groaning where they rubbed up against one
another.

He was afraid to speak, to give her
away. She must be able to see him just fine. In which
case, her silence was suggestive. It was a warning. The whole
set-up was hoary—or hairy.

There were others out there, nearby,
for he heard their cheerful, youthful voices. And yet he knew
enough to be afraid. Fifty yards off the street, and it was a whole
‘nother world.

It was a big city, its infernal hum all
around. The parks, the little patches of jungle splotched here and
there, were oases of sanity by day and a kind of insanity by
night.

That was a fine way of saying it was
just kids, mostly; getting out of stuffy apartments and away from
soul-crushing, barren existences if only for a brief moment of play
and hooliganism.

He stumbled over a small cut in the
ground, and then there was soft dirt underfoot. The tip of his
stick brushed something higher and thicker and stronger than grass.
Flowers, he surmised.

He decided to go left, possibly around
it. The smell of lilies arose all around him, thick and sweet.
There was another smell there too, the smell of the earth. He
wondered if there were cedars around here somewhere. He hoped so.
He always liked the smell when he was under cedars.

He waited for a moment.

The whistle came again, from sort of
ahead of him but off to the right, as if shaped and distorted by
intervening landscape features. She was farther away now, it
seemed. She was like a siren, a siren of the night.

Scott decided to pee right where he
was. He could always plead insanity. If it was her, she’d wait, and
if not…not.

He coughed twice, carefully, and then
carefully put the stick under his arm, and proceeded to thoroughly
relieve himself. The pungent steam was both a reminder of boiled
cabbage and the fact that all men were animals.

***

In familiar surroundings, vertigo
normally wasn’t a problem, but with the uneven ground and the
stumbling around in the blackness and the dew, Scott was grateful
for an overhead lamp up ahead.

Its fuzzy globe of prismatic colour
told him which way was up and how far he could safely wobble
without falling over.

The moment passed.

“…
Betty…?” Scott
hissed into the darkness, ears straining for the hint of a
footfall.

“
It’s okay, here I am,
Lover.”

Scott caught himself with a
start.

He stood there, trembling, sagging in
relief. There was the briefest of sounds and then her scent was
there.

“
Betty.”

“
Scott.”

She held him and wetness filled his
eyes as he clung to her. It was all too brief.

“
We’d better
go.”

His heart raced and the blood sang in
his ears. It was relief and the terror of what came
next.

“
Yes. It’s just that I
didn’t expect it to be so late.” Scott didn’t bother to dry his
tears.

He felt a little better now.

“
Oh, Jesus. I was scared
shitless, Honey.” He let it all out in one big exhalation. “Oh,
God. Thank God.”

She took him by the hand.

“
It’s okay, Scott. Forward
twenty steps, and then there’s a small stairs. A bit to the right,
and then we’re going up.”

With a grin as big as all outdoors on
his homely mug, Scott plodded along, checking still, off to the
right with his stick and trying to take regular-sized
steps.

“
Okay, slow down. One or
two more…good.”

Scott paused.

First one.

He lifted a foot and located the step
with the tip of his cane.

“
Upsy-daisy.”

He found the next level and then began
tapping his way up. The steps must be pretty wide. He negotiated
the stairs with a silent Betty holding his hand for reassurance
more than anything. Scott had gone up and down stairs a million
times on his own. He just needed to know how high and how many.
He’d gone up more than one set of stairs on all fours. It was
better than dying.

“
Three more,
Scott.”

“
Yes.” His questing cane
had already found the flat and level.

If only they had time to talk, and the
privacy. Other hushed voices nearby ruled that out. They were on
the run and interactions should be avoided as much as possible. All
kinds of people in the park at night, Scott thought. Betty had to
avoid her fellow robots if at all possible, with their total recall
and constant recording and feedback links.

There were plenty of other
hazards.

You couldn’t rule it out, anything from
muggers to dog-walkers and joggers and teenagers
drinking.

If they could just get out of the city
undetected, they might have a chance. If nothing else, they might
get a two or three-day head start while they figured out what to do
next.

There was an abrupt burst of laughter,
raucous and mean.

“
Well, well, well. What do
we have here?”

“
Say! Dewey! Would you
look at that!”

“
Ooh-ee.”

***

The tone said it all, and Scott’s neck
prickled in sudden fear. Punks, and he caught the faint whiff of
alcohol. Betty’s sudden stop and the long silence implied
much.

“
It’s a lovely evening,
isn’t it, little lady?” Someone spat. “Oh, such a little
sweetie-pie.”

The accents and emphasis were lewd and
carefully offensive.

“
Yes, it’s very pleasant.”
Betty gave Scott’s bicep a quick squeeze and then let
go.

Scott’s imagination ran wild. He could
only try to visualize. There were at least three of
them.

Shoe scuffs, breathing, giggles off to
the right…someone in front and one off to the left as
well.

“
So, Baby, what do you say
you ditch the loser and come along party with us?”

“
Yeah!”

“
That guy’s nowhere,
Baby.” He had a real scumbag giggle on him. "Why, he can't even
really 'preciate ya, can he?"

“
We’ll show you a good
time!”

More laughs, and someone sloshed a
bottle of something. That was the guy to Scott’s immediate right
front.

“
I’m sorry. We have
someplace we need to be.” She was two feet away, a little in front
and to Scott’s left.

“
We
wasn’t asking, lady.”

“
Leave her
alone.”

“
Shut up, Mister
Blind-Melon.”

Scott turned angrily. He was about to
open his mouth when a hard hand shoved him back. The guy was right
there, and he caught himself, teetering on the brink of the eight
concrete steps they had just come up.

He stood there unsteadily, knees bent.
His feet were apart and he knew where at least one of them was.
Hard breathing was right there. The guy was drunk and not in that
good a shape by the sounds of things, but then Scott wasn’t either.
The stick was sort of trailing behind him now.

Come on, Pally…say
something.

The guy sniffled and then a
hyper-aware Scott had him dead to rights.

Thank you very much, sir.

Make the first one count.

Thanks, Dad.

“
What made me do this?”
His voice was clear and strong.