Marlowe and the Spacewoman (22 page)

“Yeah,” said Marlowe,  “A lot.  More than you could know.  Thanks.”

“For all your advanced technology, Marlowe, you’re really rather simple.  Now can we focus on the task at hand, not dying?”

“Sorry.  I lost it there for a moment.  I’m OK now.  You’re right, we’ll get through this and fix everything.  It’ll all be fine.  Absolutely fine.”  He started rocking back and forth, hugging himself as their predicament broke through the warm haze of their kiss.

Nina walked over to his light bead, which was perched precariously on the floor grating.  She picked it up and and handed it back to Marlowe.  “You’ve been in worse situations, right?”

Marlowe stared at the bead, smearing blood on it.  “No, not really.”

“What about the recon parlor?”

“I was in touch with House during all that.”

Nina shook her head in exasperation.  “Fine.  Well, Huggy Bear’s not in that tank, and there’s only one direction he could have gone, which is down this corridor.  Shall we?”

Nina interlocked her arm through Marlowe’s and took the lead.  He felt out of sorts; without his low light implant, he couldn’t see clearly.  The light bead did little to dispel the darkness.  His eyes hurt as they struggled to remember what to do with the pupils to compensate, how to manipulate muscles that hadn’t been used involuntarily in a long time.

“Hey, Marlowe, wait, we can contact House with my wrist communicator.  House, can you hear me?”

“It’s no good.  That’s a cheapie communicator.  It’s slaved to my PDI.”

“It doesn’t work without your PDI?”

“No.  You have to be within two kilometers of my PDI for it to work; everything is routed through me.”

“But then why even have a wrist communicator?  There’s no point if you need to have the PDI anyway!”

“It’s a kid’s toy.  I had it growing up.  It’s the novelty.”

“You mean like walkie-talkies?”

“I don’t know what those are.”

“Never mind.  The more I learn about this world, the less I understand.  Say, do you smell that?”

Marlowe sniffed, and immediately regretted it.  “I can’t smell anything but years old raw sewage.  My nasal filters are clogged with the odor, and I can’t open them now.”

“It smells like gas.”

“Gas?”

“Natural gas.  Assuming you still put the same additives in it to give it a distinctive smell.”

“I…I don’t know.  I can’t check with my PDI down.”

“Well, all other things being equally bad right now, let’s assume it is gas.  They’re gassing us.”

“Or worse.  They’re pumping natural gas in with the plan of blowing us up.  It makes sense.  Some small bombs to seal us in, then pump the facility full of natural gas and detonate it. We’re deep enough underground, people might not even notice.”

“See, you’re not so useless without your PDI.  You can still think.  Maybe this failure is a good thing.”

“Help could be on the way if I could reach House.”

“Coulda, shoulda, woulda.  I’d still be at 55 Cancri if the scientists hadn’t been wrong about the debris orbiting the star.  But we can’t change events that have already happened, so I suggest we focus on the here and now.  I’ll bet that hacker Huggy Bear made himself a back door out of this place.”

They kept going down the corridor.  They even resorted to calling out to Huggy Bear, yelling for help, screaming for someone to hear them.  Between outbursts, they listened.  And heard nothing.

“He’s got to be able to hear us.”

Nina shrugged.  “He’s afraid.  Or better yet, already outside and away through his secret exit.”

“I think that gas is getting to your head.”

They kept walking, shouting, listening.  It was Nina, who was more used to using her eyes unaided, who noticed it.  A slight change in the level of light as they walked.

“Marlowe, stop.”

Marlowe stopped.

Nina made a fist around her light bead.  “Cover up your light bead.”

Marlowe covered his up in his fist.  Pitch blackness descended.  “Why are we doing this?”

“Shh.  Just look around.”

“Why do I have to be quiet if we’re looking for something?”

“Shh.  It’s just semantics.  Look around.”

“It’s pitch black!”

“No, it isn’t.  I walked past something that was giving off light.  Just not a whole lot.  Look around for light.”

Marlowe spun around in a complete circle.  It left him a little dizzy, but as he turned, he noticed that it wasn’t completely pitch black.  He had finally hit on the successful natural response to darkness, opening up his pupils.  He noticed a faint, faint glow emanating from his fist, and another one presumably emanating from Nina’s fist.

“Hey, I see something, but I think it’s your light bead.  Move your hand up and down.”

The faint, faint glow moved up and down.  “Yeah, it’s you.”

He spun around again, but again all he made out was his fist and Nina’s.  The smell of gas was starting to seep through his sewage-clogged nasal filters.  It was natural gas, and Marlowe felt himself getting light-headed.  Nina coughed.

“Are you sure you saw something?”

“Yes!” Nina hissed.  “I’m positive!”

Marlowe, convinced at both the folly of their current search and the folly of attempting to persuade Nina to move on, rolled his eyes.  And that’s when he saw the third glow.

“Nina!  Above us!”

Nina gasped and then Marlowe went blind with the explosion of light.  He screamed, for about half a second, before he realized it was Nina’s light bead and not the gas igniting.  Her light bead revealed a service port in the ceiling.  It was just large enough to admit someone of Huggy Bear’s girth, and was hanging ever-so-slightly open, letting in a crack of illumination.

“This looks promising,” said Nina.  “But I can’t quite reach the handle.”

Marlowe dropped his light bead and reached up, grasping the handle and pulling down hard.  He’d been expecting resistance, but there was none, so the port swung open and Marlowe fell backwards.  Which was just as well since a ladder slid down through the open port, crashing into the floor with a loud clang.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” said Marlowe, retrieving his light bead before standing up.  “Go.  I’m right behind you.”

The climb up the ladder was long, cramped, and very uncomfortable.  The rungs of the ladder were rusty and jagged, and with each new abrasion and cut into his hands, Marlowe mourned anew the loss of his nano probes.  Above, if he craned his neck painfully, and Nina was positioned just so, Marlowe could glimpse a bright light.  A bright bulb high above them.  He found it incredibly frustrating that with each painful step and each excruciating grip of the rungs, that bulb didn’t change in size.  He wondered if the ladder was sinking at the same rate they were climbing.  Eventually the futility and discomfort of staring up convinced Marlowe to just look straight ahead.  And then he dropped his light bead.

“Damn it!”

Nina stopped climbing.  “What is it?”

“I dropped another light bead.  Those things are expensive!”

Nina said something under her breath, but Marlowe couldn’t make it out without the audio amplifiers built into his ear canal.  She started climbing again.  He thought about asking her what she said, but thought better of it and simply followed.

After what seemed like hours, and for all Marlowe knew without his PDI, it was, they finally came to the surface.  A small lamp was set into the wall just under the lip of the exit, with the fainter light of evening above it.  Nina poked her head out slowly, checking to see if it was safe.  Evidently it was, because she continued out.   Marlowe crept out after her, welcoming the delicious sensation of brittle grass blades under his hands.  Nina was flat on the ground, and he followed her example.  The ground was cool and hard, the yellow grass itchy against his cheek.  The night air blew gently over them, sucking away body heat.  Confused by the transition from artificial light to natural darkness, his irises and pupils were at odds about what to do.  Finally they compromised on a setting that revealed the world to him, but not too clearly.  Marlowe marveled when the darkness slowly ebbed away and details began to manifest themselves.  His eyes were starting to get the hang of things.  He surveyed their surroundings and immediately pined for the ability to increase optical mag.

There were some industrial plants off in the distance, but most of the area was a large open field, just like the spot where they had entered the underground facility.  Marlowe couldn’t find north with the PDI down, so it was Nina, used to navigating without electronic aid, who found the car first.  It was about half a kilometer away, although again Marlowe couldn’t be sure without the PDI.  Most alarming, though, was the very large tanker truck hovering next to the Studebaker.  It was eight meters long, with a six meter long, nine meter diameter teardrop shaped tank taking up most of its length.  The bright orange tank had a large green “CG&E” painted across it, a bronze colored snake eating its tail framing the letters.  A smaller copy of the logo appeared on the open driver’s side door of the truck.  The entrance they had used to enter the facility was washed out in the blinding glare of the truck’s headlights.

Marlowe could make out a single figure standing astride the truck’s open door, but the twilight, lack of low light filtration, and inability to zoom in made it impossible for him to see the figure clearly.  In the back of his mind, a voice murmured concern about his father.  A very faint murmur.

“Gas truck?” asked Nina.

“Sure looks like a City Gas and Electric truck.  But looks can be deceiving.”  Marlowe noticed a sliver of rusty metal sticking out of the webbing between the thumb and index finger of his left hand.  His hands and arms we covered in similar bits of corroded metal embedded in his flesh.  They all itched and burned like crazy.  He picked at it clumsily with his thick, swollen fingers, trying to pull it out.  In a normal situation, the nano probes would have long since pushed out the sliver and started clearing up the bruise around it.  Of course, in a normal situation, he probably wouldn’t have been crawling around in an abandoned sewage treatment plant in order to get access to the forbidden Internet.  He finally got some purchase on the sliver and yanked it out.  The pain intensified for a second, and then diminished.  Syrupy red blood oozed out, and Marlowe surprised himself by putting the injured portion of his hand into his mouth and sucking on it.  He’d never done that before.

“Think your dad’s OK?”

“Depends on the driver and what he has with him.  That car is very hard to get into if the doors stay locked.”  A thought popped into his head.  “Hey, have you seen Huggy Bear?”

“Yeah, he’s slumped on the ground, about a quarter of a mile behind us.  Presumably, he saw the truck and ran away from it.”

“Quarter of a what?”

“Mile.  Unit of measure.  A mile is about two kilometers.”

“Then why not say half a click?”

“Because I’m not used to metric.  Does this really matter right now?”

“No.  I just wanted to make sure Huggy Bear got out.”

“Think it’s safe to approach the truck?”

Marlowe pulled out his illegal gun, a Hunt-Wesson 12mm ion revolver with StickySmart grip and plexi-steel barrel.  When he squeezed the handle, the gun whispered a curt hello and reported ready for duty.  

“Oh, yeah, it’s safe.  We’re not exactly defenseless.”

“What if they have bigger guns?”

“I can take out the truck from here.  One shot to the tank would ignite the gas.”  

“What about your dad?”

“A fair consideration.  The blast would most likely kill him, but if it didn’t, he’d be mighty upset.  A more important factor, though, is I just made the last payment on the Studebaker.  I really like that car.”

Nina looked back from her vantage point and rolled her eyes.  “OK…so what then?  We wait, or we rush them?”

“If we wait, they’ll leave, detonate the gas they’ve pumped into the plant, and maybe the car gets damaged that way.”

“So we rush them.”

Marlowe gestured forward magnanimously.  “Ladies first.”

“You’ve got body armor, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re already winded, right?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that-”

“Here’s what I’m thinking.  You’ve got body armor, so a slower approach isn’t as risky for you.  I’m still acclimated to one and a half gees, so I’ll sprint down to the Studebaker, which shouldn’t take more than, oh, thirty seconds for me, maybe more if I zig-zag.  You start up behind me, but when I get to the car, I bring it back and pick you up.  If trouble starts, you shoot the truck, unless I’m too close, in which case, I’ll head back and you shoot the truck.  Deal?”

“I dunno, that sounds kinda-”

“Good.”  Nina bolted up and shot off.  Marlowe stayed flat for a few seconds, and then, when nothing bad immediately happened to Nina, reluctantly got up and followed her.

She got to the car uneventfully after some impressive zigs and zags.  Marlowe was only a quarter of the way there, his chest screaming with pain, when she got to the door.  But it didn’t open.  Marlowe tried to call the car on his PDI, but then remembered it was down.  Nina circled around the car frantically for a moment, all while Marlowe raised the Hunt-Wesson and lined up the truck driver in his site.