Marlowe and the Spacewoman (19 page)

“A really old, working computer.”

“How old?”

“A hundred, hundred and ten years old,” said Nina.

Teddy whistled appreciatively.  Or tried to.  But he was a dog, and all he managed to do was spray saliva all over Marlowe’s crotch.  The fabric of Marlowe’s pants tisk-tisked and attempted to wring itself dry, causing Marlowe to give an awful, high-pitched yelp before he put a stop to it.  Nina stopped rubbing Teddy’s head and almost fell over laughing.

Marlowe gave Nina a pained glance as he adjusted the now wrinkled crotch of his pants.  “It’s not funny.  That really hurt.”

Teddy sunk his head.  “Sorry about that, Marlowe.  And Nina, please don’t stop rubbing my head.  I’m rather enjoying that.”

“Oh, OK.”  Nina resumed, scratching behind his ears.  Teddy’s hind legs kicked involuntarily.

“Ah, yeah, that’s the spot.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Marlowe broke in impatiently, “but we’re on a bit of a deadline here.”

“Sorry.  I think your best bet would be Huggy Bear.”

“Huggy Bear?  Who’s that?” asked Marlowe.

“An old hacker friend of mine.  Took care of my registration in the Canine Registry, kept me off the ‘GMO Hunt Down and Kill’ list.  His hobby is retro computing.  He collects and restores old computers.”

“Where can we find Huggy Bear?” asked Nina.

“Well, his day job is at a music store.  Sunrise CDs.  If anyone has a computer as old as the one you need, it would be Huggy Bear.”

“House, you have an address for that?”

“I’ve already downloaded it to the Studebaker.”

“Thanks, Teddy.  I owe you.”

Teddy started to look uncomfortable.  “You’re welcome, Marlowe.  No problem.  Always happy to help out a friend.  But, you know…”

Marlowe smiled and reached into his trench coat.  “I’m just kidding.  It’s just so funny how uncomfortable you are when it comes to payment.  Almost endearing.  Here.”  Marlowe pulled out a couple of simulated pork PoorChops, peeled off their self-heating foil wrappers, and tossed the steaming masses down in front of the dog.  Teddy wagged his clipped tail and pounced on them.  

“Mmm!  Thanks, Marlowe,” he said, lips smacking.

“Say hi to Deedee for me.”

Teddy nodded, but didn’t stop eating.

The Studebaker was gone when they got back to the school.  Marlowe swore under his breath.  “Damn it, father, what have you done?  House!  Where’s the car?”

“Dad wanted to go to a safe house of his in the neighborhood.  He said he’d be done before you got back,” said House meekly.

Marlowe looked up and down the street.  The constables were now seated at a small table outside the Bucky Brew across the street, watching the school over a couple mugs of joe.  “Where is he?”

“Half a kilometer to the east.  I’m downloading his coordinates to your PDI now.”

“Can’t you make the car come back here,” asked Nina.

“Yeah, but father might not be in the car.  And if he has some hidey-hole he set up from before the coup, Governor only knows what’s in it.  The crazy is new for him, but the paranoia isn’t.  He’s probably stocked the place up with all sorts of big shiny guns a crazy person shouldn’t have access to.  It isn’t just my civic duty to keep him out of it, it’s plain common sense.  Can’t have him finding his way back to House loaded for bear.  There might be a tragic accident.”  And if he had any really good guns, thought Marlowe, they’d be unlicensed and untraceable.  Marlowe was always looking to add to his arsenal without tipping his inventory to Obedere.

So they walked, following the trace on the PDI.  Marlowe walked fast, working out the anger without the aid of the nano probes.  He had half a mind to cut his father loose, but the man would almost certainly be more trouble running around unchecked, especially if he had more than one safe house set up.  Jebediah would eventually gun for his brother, Obedere, or even him.  The first two didn’t bother him too much, but that last potential target just didn’t sit well.

“Nina,” said Marlowe as they were getting close, “I think I may need your help on this one.  I’d like to avoid as much of a scene as possible when we find him, and that means force.  Any ideas how we should proceed on that front?”

“If I might make a suggestion,” asked House.

“No,” said Marlowe, “you may not.  You got us into this mess.”

Nina waited to see if House would respond, but he stayed silent.  “He doesn’t like you much, does he?”

“Father?  No.  He’s probably still wondering if I jammed him up during the coup.  Even if he believed me when I said I had nothing to do with it, the man’s not thinking clearly most of the time.”

“So we use that.  You confront him, talk to him, distract him.  I work my way behind him and  jump him.”

“Man, I hate my family.”  Marlowe shook his head.  “What did I do to deserve all this?”

“Well-” said House.

“Nope,” broke in Marlowe, “you’re not allowed to talk right now, so can it.”

If Marlowe had any hope of avoiding a scene, that hope was thrown off a cliff, dashed against the rocks below, and then the sticky mess stomped on by a squadron of constables when they finally caught up with Jebediah.  He was hopping up and down, screaming at a store front.  Passersby were giving him a wide berth.  No constables had arrived yet, but they’d show up soon enough.  Marlowe wondered just how bad it would get for the old man if he was arrested.  It might actually be for the best, for Marlowe anyway.  Which meant that Obedere would never go for it.  He’d instruct his constables to leave things be.

Nina started edging around Jebediah, working over to the other side of him.  Marlowe looked at the object of Jebediah’s wrath - a special edition Bucky Brew shop.  

Bucky Brew was always trying to be fresh, keep themselves in the public consciousness.  So they’d opened a series of one-off special edition themed shops that were different but still served the same old reliable Bucky Brew.   There was the Zeppelin Edition, where you rode a sky car up to a floating cafe, the Monorail Edition, where you boarded a bullet train that ran in a loop around the downtown area and had to hold your cup at an angle due to the extreme acceleration during the express portions of the line, and the Troglodyte edition, where you donned night-vision goggles (or used your low level light implant) and descended into a pitch black basement to buy and drink your coffee, just to name a few.

They were in front of the Troglodyte edition, and Jebediah, a cup of Bucky Brew in one hand, was foaming at the mouth as he jumped up and down.  The coffee, thank the Governor, had a lid on it.  Marlowe could not make out a word Jebediah was saying, probably because the man was incoherent with rage.  He called out gently.  “Father?  Father, what are you doing?”

Jebediah stopped screaming, and his hopping subsided into a series of disconcerting twitches.   He turned to Marlowe, eyes unfocused.  Mechanically, he raised the cup of coffee to his lips and took a swig.

“Spares, is that you?”  His face was red but fading.  “Look what they’ve done to my safe house, boy.  Look what they’ve done to my safe house.”

Marlowe looked past Jebediah to Nina.  She was slowly creeping up on the man, who’d suddenly deflated like an Eastern European built zeppelin.  He shook his head, signaling Nina to hold off.  “What are you talking about?”

“It’s gone.  They turned it into a parrot-damned coffee shop.”  He tilted his head slightly.  “They make good coffee, though.”  He sighed.  “I had to rent a pair of goggles, though.  My low light implant was disabled when I was…hospitalized.  Did you know this coffee shop opens up on the old sewer lines?  Why would you want to buy coffee in a sewer?”

“Come on, father.  People are staring.  They’ve probably already called the constables in.  You don’t want to get sent back, do you?”

“No,” said Jebediah truculently.

“Then lets get the car and get out of here.  Does that sound good?”

Jebediah’s eyes darted back and forth, and he jumped when he saw Nina behind him.  “You’re right, the constables.  I won’t let them take me back.  Never!”

Nina took Jebediah gently by the arm.  “They can’t get you if we aren’t here.  Where’s the car?”

Jebediah waved his other arm in a loop.  “Circling around the block.  Parking downtown is terrible.”

As if on cue, the Studebaker pulled up alongside them, stopping in the middle of traffic and triggering a blast of car horns.  The doors popped open and without any prompting, Jebediah climbed into the back seat.  “They can’t have converted all my safe houses into coffee shops,” he mumbled under his breath as he hunkered down on the floor.  Marlowe barely caught it, even with his enhanced audio pickup, but that told him pretty clearly he’d have to keep an eagle eye on his father.

Marlowe turned to Nina, but she wasn’t in the car yet.  “Nina?  Nina, where are you?”

She rushed out of the coffee shop a moment later.  “Sorry, I really wanted a cup of coffee, and they were so pleased that we got Jebediah to leave, they gave me one for free.  It’s pretty good coffee, too.  The best I’ve had in years.”

“I still say there’s something pretty sinister about the whole setup.  Like they’re trying to take over the world or something.  But that isn’t the most pressing matter we face right now.  Car, take us to Sunrise CDs.”

The Studebaker honked twice happily and set off, having found yet another joyous purpose.

Sunrise CDs was downtown, not too far from City Hall.  It was almost seven, so traffic had thinned out considerably.  Despite the lack of traffic, there was still no place to park, so the Studebaker began circling the block.  

The neighborhood was old but not quaint, undeveloped but not desirable.  The buildings lining the street, while short and standing unaided, nevertheless exuded a sense of dereliction and decay.  Cracks criss-crossed the sun-bleached, acid-stained stucco, and window and door frames were no longer level, but tended to sag heavily to one side.  The store they sought was fairly small and bookish, wedged between two other small and bookish shops, with tall windows and a large wooden sign hanging outside the front.  It read “Sunrise CDs” and had a picture of a silvery gold disk in the background.  

“Car, drop us off here and keep circling the block.  Father, you stay in here.   No telling if this Huggy Bear character will recognize you and turn you in to the constables.  And when I say ‘stay here,’ I mean it.  No more side trips!  Got that House?”

“Yes, I’ve ‘got’ it,” said House.

“Fine, fine,” said Jebediah, still occasionally twitching.  “But I’m getting cramped.  Can’t you tint the windows or something so I can sit up?”

“I wish I could, father, but the tinting function broke a few weeks ago and I haven’t been able to get it fixed.”  Marlowe’s voice didn’t flutter at all with the lie.  “Yet another hardship for you to bravely overcome.”

“Damned hardships are becoming more and more uncomfortable,” Jebediah muttered as the car stopped for Nina and Marlowe to get out.

They walked to the front of the shop.  A red neon “Open” sign above the glass door flickered on and off, humming like a frustrated mosquito trying to feed on an armadillo.  Nina opened the door, which jangled a bell hanging just above of it.  Marlowe followed cautiously behind her, the nasal filters slamming down at the musty air inside.

The interior pressed against them the moment they crossed the threshold.  And this despite the complete lack of patrons.  The walls were completely hidden from view, covered from floor to ceiling by shelves.  More stand-alone shelves cut across the floor, leaving just enough room between each shelf for one person to walk.  The lighting was dim and yellow, and a harsh, metallic sound was playing through tinny speakers in the corners.  

“Can I help you?”

A portly, long-haired man with bad acne and thick glasses stood watching them from behind a counter.  His thin smile was almost lost in the blindingly bright yellow and green tie-dye turtleneck.  A wispy, pathetic attempt at a beard hung limply from the man’s pallid face, and the breast pocket of his shirt had a fat, yellowed paperback wedged into it.  Marlowe could make out a picture of some sort of spaceship on the cover of the antique book, with a saucer-eyed alien emerging from it.  All and all, a very shabby presentation, and providing a sharp contrast to the man’s most striking feature, his perfectly straight, unbelievably white teeth.  

Nina had been taking in the store, looking through the shelves.  “CDs!”  She held up one of the CDs, almost laughing.  “I can’t believe you still use CDs.”

“Be careful with that,” shouted the proprietor.  “They require gentle handling!”

He rushed around the counter and deftly scooped the CD out of Nina’s hand as if it were made of porcelain.  “Please, serious buyers only!”  Now that the man was closer, Marlowe noted the not-so-faint scent of raw sewage.

Marlowe tilted his hat back to scratch his head.  “Why would I want something that fragile when I can just download a PHAT of what I want directly to my PDI?”

“Because,” said the man, puffing up with indignation, “PHAT files, no matter what the so-called experts say about quantum digital recording, cannot match the sound quality on a CD.  CDs are crisper, more real, more present.”

“You sound like one of the vinyl snobs who frequented a music shop near where I went to school.”