The Scarab (16 page)

In the hospitality suite, there was a colossal party going
on, with lots of dark beer flowing from a corner keg. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You
Were Here” album blared over the crowd noise. I told a door keeper dressed like
the Grim Reaper my name and that I was looking for a member of Lamborghini
Aerospace.

“He’s here!” the Reaper shouted to
everybody. “Scarab’s here.”

Along the back wall were a score of
cardboard tombstones, mine among them. I had wandered into the equivalent of a
wake for today’s dead.

“How do you like the music?” asked
the Reaper. “Somebody said it was your favorite.”

I vaguely remember using the tune “Wish
You Were Here” for a kiss-off message when I killed somebody, and “Welcome to
the Machine” when I closed on a victim, but I have about fifty digital songs
that I choose from. Already, people were making up intimate details about me. I
let it pass and gave him a thumbs up.

A skinny, pale techie half way
across the room raised his arms and rushed to greet me. He had deep black hair
streaming from every follicle on his head. He reminded me of Sam’s son,
Michael, with an aura of enthusiasm that made him impossible to dislike. “You
really know how to die man! Everybody thought you deserved a party for what you
did. I was buying a one way ticket to the junkyard when this guys flies out of
nowhere. Zoom!” The gentleman had been indulging heavily. Close behind him was
a short, energetic girl with flaming-orange hair and a vest edged with Celtic
knotwork.

“And you are?”

“Antonio. Pleased to meet you,
Scarab,” he said pumping my hand and spilling sparkling white wine. I decided
we were going to be friends.

“Call me Ethan.”

“This is my dear friend, the lovely
and talented Josie Valencia,” she extended her tiny hand for me to clasp or
kiss as I chose.

“The singer?” I asked. She looked a
lot different than I expected, smaller, with less makeup. She certainly liked
to be noticed, though. “I hear you on the radio all the time while I’m working
in the shop. I love that cover you do of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘I Drove All Night’.”

“I want to be an actress like her
someday, too.” She had a charming Louisiana accent that never manifested when
she was singing.

“I hope the wake isn’t too boring
for you.”

She waved the thought away. “This
is a great party. They’ve got the third and fourth place winners from Indy last
year. Cremation, the lead guitar player for that new Liverpool group Gravity
Sucks is over spiking the punch. The cartoonist who draws those adorable dogs
is over hiding behind that fellow from the Olympics. And Tony knows them all!
He introduced me to them. Later on, he’s going to take me up to his room and
show me his interface.”

I kept a straight face. “Yes. I
hear he’s got some fine equipment.”

Antonio stepped in. “Josie, why don’t
you ask our cartoonist friend if he’ll come and sign the Scarab’s sling.” She
ran off after he promised she could sign it next.

Once we were alone, Antonio made no
mention of my new hair style, which I appreciated. I had paid a quick visit to
the hotel barber shop to cover up the imbalance due to the fire. Now, both
sides were quite short, and hair from the top of my head stuck out in all
directions. Several younger people told me it was the latest style; however, I’ve
had my hair done by the same barber for ten years, and he’d turn in his razor
before he’d try something like this. Antonio did, however, want to know how I’d
earned the sling on my right arm.

“I tripped on a chair celebrating
after we killed the tank,” I said.

“What did you hit the North Korean
with to disable him? I thought he’d tear you a new tailpipe. Instead, he was
begging for help on broad band frequencies before I put him out of his misery.
His tank was jerking around like an epileptic on speed,” said Antonio.

I kept a tight lip about the virus
generator and shrugged. “That was just an annoyance. He would’ve recovered soon
enough if you hadn’t breached him. I’d keep my distance from the site, though.
There might still be some nasty bio-contaminants floating around.”

“An inspiration,” said some guy
with a British accent, slapping me on the back. He was lanky, and dressed in
black leather pants like Jim Morrison. It could only have been Cremation. “I
wrote a whole new song watching that last kill. We want to use the race footage
for the video. The whole post-industrial theme combined with the backdrop of
nature and big explosions. What a rush! What an ending, watching him sacrifice
his life for another.”

I put on my Saturday socializing
smile again. “I’m not quite dead yet. That’s what I wanted to talk to you
about.” Antonio responded with an evil chuckle that started low in his belly
and ended much too loud. It was the same sort of chuckle used by fathers when
their sons announce their first girlfriend.

I gave him a few of the details,
and added, “Since team scores are at stake, and many of the top ten teams are
among the dead already, I need your signature to re-enter.”

“Certainly! Tonight, I’d give you a
kidney.” He gave me a sloppy hug. “Paul, come here,” he bellowed to a member of
the Australian Hicks-Eisner Overdrive team, a driver for last year’s second
place winner, the Tasmanian Tornado. “Sign this man’s petition. You owe me.”

Paul grunted. “Sure. He’s never
fired on me, and it will really piss off those stuffed shirts from GEDM.”

Where had these men been the whole
game?

An impromptu group of volunteers
gathered to help me get back in the game. One of the dead players from Canada offered me the use of his Sansui interface, since mine had been seized for evidence.
I collected various other pieces of equipment and knowledge from the others. We
brainstormed a little about how I could minimize the cost of going back for my
pilot, but nobody had any solid advice. I didn’t tell them that one of my
cycles had been seriously damaged because word might get to the Living. The
woman from
Car and Driver
took notes of everything so I could send out
thank-you cards to everyone by Christmas. I promised her pictures of the whole
team for her article, which was a big deal because no one else had pictures of
me. I’m still sensitive about the scar.

Since Sandia would remain off
limits till tomorrow morning, I used the most recent printouts of race
standings, plus all the updated details people could remember, to build a
profile of the remaining drivers.

1. Hicks-Eisner Overdrive Tasmanian
Tornado. A very fast midrange vehicle. He was so far ahead, he’d probably
finish before the next session was half over. He could afford to help me
because I wasn’t a danger. This was my first yes.

2. The last remaining Japanese
midrange belonged to the Muramatsu corporation, a new company that dealt in
everything from transport ships to electric guitars. Their vehicle, the SRV-23,
was designed in the old Gran Prix style with space for one pilot and a lot of
engine.

3. GEDM’s midrange survivor, the
Tomahawk, conveniently the only uninjured vehicle in the game, but far behind
the Japanese. This vehicle was neck-and-neck with the Porsche lightweight to be
the leader of the main body of vehicles to reach Munich during the first few
game minutes tomorrow. This was my first no vote. There were several impolite
adjectives attached to that negative.

4. The Porsche team seemed
reasonable and willing to discuss business. They’d wash my back if I found a
way to wash theirs. Their lightweight was greased-lightning but had used all of
its heavy weaponry already. I’d count them as a tentative yes. I had plenty of
time for horse trading later.

5. The first place heavyweight from
Andiron Enterprises, the Andiron Express. This wasn’t a typical car company;
rather, they specialized in freight hauling, buses, trains, and construction
vehicles. It wasn’t a tank but it was built like one. It used its plow
attachment to get through bad weather as well as to ram slower opponents. They
were currently neutral, being more-or-less in their own category now.

6. My old nemesis Exotech had one
midrange vehicle left, code-named X-ray Rainbow. They were my third definite
no. I found out why they were so hot for my decloaking technology. They claimed
the X-ray was invisible to radar, laser, and normal sight. It was mainly
plastic composites, very light but horribly expensive. It maintained some of
its invisibility by the odd angles on its surface, and the use of fiber-optic
panels and cameras to broadcast an illusion on its exterior of what should be
on the road. This was probably the motivation for the Rainbow portion of the
name, although it ruined the deadly images conjured by the first half. I’m told
the illusion was not unlike the special effects from the movie “Predator 4.”
The pilot had egotistically chosen the call name “Frodo”. This prototype hadn’t
made a big splash on any charts, too weak to get involved in any combat, and
too fragile to run long without a pit stop. They had borrowed repair budgets
from the rest of their fleet just to keep this money pit moving. I could think
of five tests that would wipe them out without heat-seeking weapons.

The biggest mystery surrounding the
Exotech stealth craft was its current location. From the points accrued each day,
we computed how far it had gone in the race to the nearest fifty kilometers.
For the last day and a half, its fuel economy had jumped incredibly. I had a
suspicion or two that I would investigate later when I had time to plan race
strategy.

7. GEDM’s heavyweight. They were
the only other team to have multiple vehicles. That’s the fourth no vote.

8. BW’s first heavyweight, Thor’s
Hammer. This tank was the only one so far not to break down in any way. They
gained most of their present standing by racking up five kills, mainly because
they had incredible range on their main gun. While stationary, they could use
their main propulsion grids to propel tungsten steel rods at outrageous
velocities. The initial impact did little more than poke a small hole in the
victim’s armor. However, once embedded, each rod had a small secondary
explosive intended to blow up inside the hull. Nobody had found out yet what
they used for close-range conflicts. Unfortunately, they had strong business
ties to GEDM that they couldn’t break. BW wished me luck, but couldn’t go on
record voting against the Detroit monolith. Several engineers were willing to
talk shop with me, though. They filled my head with more mechanic’s trivia and
discussed what it might cost to build a production version of the Ghedra in Germany. Drinking more Bach beer than I thought possible, I finally moved them over to the
abstain category.

9. The Turn-Pica Elite luxury
vehicle from my friends at LAS, the vehicle closest to my own projected
ranking. They were the second definite yes.

10. The team that had tried to
punch me out in the casino, North Ameri-Car. They had a heavyweight pulling up
the rear in dead last, but still deadly—the Hyperion. But with a little charm I
might be able to turn the reason for their animosity to my own ends. I had
already leaked that the reason for so many “accidents” during the game had been
TSM. That and my earlier gesture of the scotch made folks less hostile toward
me, but didn’t get me welcomed like a long-lost relative.

With the abstaining member, that
left nine voting.

I phoned the judges with an update
and asked them for a ruling if I could get another person to abstain. With
eight voting, by my reckoning, I would need only four yes votes. The man I got
was a stone wall. Half meant half. I needed five or I was walking to the loser
buffet for breakfast. This wasn’t going to be easy, but at least I had till
midnight to work the miracle.

Antonio said he’d keep twisting
arms and give me an update by the eleven o’clock meeting tonight. Then, he
switched topics to the banquet tomorrow afternoon. “Every year it’s for a
different charity. This year, it’s for the American Indian College Fund. People
pay $500 a plate to eat at the same table as a member of a finalist team, and
$50 a plate just to be in the same room. So you end up spending half an hour
with six or seven reporters; it’s for a good cause.”

I grimaced. “I don’t like
reporters. Isn’t the press conference scheduled for after the last player
crosses the finish line?”

“Officially, yes. But no one likes
to wait that long. No one appreciates the reporters, but not many fans can
afford the tickets. Tradition says you only have to answer one question and a
follow-up per person. You’d be a fool to skip. The event is the biggest free-advertising
spot in the convention. The judges award style points for attending, and some
of those reporters will vote on certain categories at the end of the race. You
can’t lose. If you don’t show up, you run the risk that they will crucify you.”
Antonio was awfully persuasive, but I still remained uncommitted.

“I’m not much for talking to nosy
strangers,” I explained.

Miss Valencia seemed offended. “But
you have to! You’ve got to at least make a showing. Bring anyone you like to
help fill out your table. Tony’s even going to have me there.”

I thought about donating $2000 just
so I could fill half the eight seats with friendly faces. “Our clothes have
been confiscated for an undetermined period. I don’t know.”

She couldn’t be denied. “You need
costumes? I can get you good costumes by then. I have contacts.” It seems that
the event did more than just introduce the finalists. To help boost attendance,
the banquet also kicked off the mother of all parties. The final party of the
convention was a costumed affair which lasted until check-out time the next
morning.

“What kind of costumes?” I asked
nervously. I recalled several teams in the past dressing according to the theme
cities in the final leg, or to hype this year’s product. I couldn’t imagine
dressing in either a German polka outfit or in a giant turtle suit.